Nythera
by Snikers
Summary: Rachel Jones is caught in the incredible Silent Hell…er, Hill. What, exactly, does the town itself have planned for her? Latest Installment: Adrenaline is good.
1. Prologue

First of all: Silent Hill belongs to Konami and not me. I do not claim ownership of Silent Hill or its franchise in any way, bla bla bla. All original characters and the like belong to me.

PROLOGUE

I sit at the desk and write. I have been writing for hours, what feels like forever. He made me. I have to write everything for him, write all I have seen, all I have felt. That's why I am here, I know.

I finally know.

I'm utterly alone. The world no longer exists beyond the light of the lamp on this desk. I am floating in an endless void. The room he locked me in no longer exists and

No.

That is wrong. The room exists, but it's not a room. I know I am not making this easy for you – if anyone is ever to read this beyond him – but please understand it is as hard for me to imagine as it is for you to read, and I'm the one experiencing it. I don't think there's any words in the english language that aptly describes it. But I think that if I had to choose one, I'd have to go with "contracting".

It is shrinking, becoming smaller. I momentarily look up every once in a while, though never stop writing – I dare not stop writing – and never see anything. I never spot the wall of the room coming toward me in the inky blackness beyond the light. All the same, I know it is true. I can feel the claustrophobia that invades my mind. And still I keep writing.

Why did I come to this town? To say it was a mistake is so much an understatement it should be illegal. There is some cruel irony, in this, you know. Dying alone. I've never liked people, and twelve hours ago if you'd asked me I'd have said I'd rather die alone. Of course, I would probably be thinking of in my sleep, or in a hospital bed. Not like this. I don't now what this will be like. I don't even know if it will hurt. But it still terrifies me.

Maybe that's not coming through in my words, the terror I feel. I don't know why, actually. It's like my fingers are writing independently of myself, so they don't have to take the burden of the creeping fear and nausea in my brain. I don't want to die.

I don't want to die. I don't want to fall asleep. I don't want to feel my consciousness slipping away when I know I'll never wake up, to fight a battle I know I'll lose. I can't get my mind off it. I can't think, I'm so scared.

The desk shifts, pressing itself against my ribs as it's pushed against a floor that isn't there anymore. I don't dare look up from my writing anymore. I'm scared I might look up and there won't be anything there. And I'm ever more scared I'll look up, and there **will** be something to see. A paradox.

The desk presses harder into my chest, and then starts to pull away. Quick as I can I snatch the pencil and paper off its surface, hugging both close to my chest as I continue to write. I know the desk disappears, although I never take my eyes off the paper. I know. It's just me, sitting on a chair, writing, in the middle of an endless black universe. The space is now very small. I have to get to my ending.

It's all around me now, I know. It's almost over. I can feel it, though it hasn't touched me yet. I can feel its breath on the back of my neck, though it doesn't breathe. I still keep writing, although my wrist and fingers ache from being used for hours. He said that if I stopped writing I would die. I still keep writing, but I think it will kill me anyway. It can feel it now, it's touch. It is taking me. It's like ice. It's sliding up my leg, like a living liquid. The darkness itself, or the room. No difference. It's sliding up my pant leg, along my calf, touching me. I'm scared of what it will do to me.

I think it wants to do more than kill me. It's pressing against my back, now. I hate being touched, but I think it likes it. It's pressing against my head like some unwelcome, distasteful giant hand running itself through my hair. It's up to my thighs now, wrapping itself around the flesh. Tasting me? God, I'm so afraid.

It runs over my shoulders, like groping hands. I can feel its weight pushing on my shirt, trails of blackness reaching down – pressing against my chest. It's like someone is trying to squeeze me until I collapse. The pressure is immense. I can't feel my feet anymore, my calves are going numb. I don't think my feet are there anymore. My fingers are still scratching into the notepad, although I can't see. I'm blind. The room is up past my hips, sliding over my stomach. It has my whole body, everything but my arms. So I can keep writing for him.

I can't breathe anymore, it's crushing me

I have to stop writing.


	2. Last Taste of Normality

NYTHERA

CHAPTER ONE

The van's headlights barely cut through the fog. Rachel Jones, the driver, squinted, but still couldn't spot a thing. She shot a look at the very short strip of visible asphalt directly in front of the vehicle just to make sure she was still on some sort of road, then turned her hazel eyes back to the impenetrable fog. Her white button-up shirt (two buttons undone, as was her preference) tucked into brown, maleish-style slacks gave her a somewhat professional look belied by her ultracasual sneakers. She took one hand off the wheel to push some of her shoulder-length brown hair back behind her ear and attempt to clear her generous bangs out of her eyes, then shot a look to her digital watch. It was already three in the afternoon.

Rachel sighed. She had no idea where she was. She shot a look to the radio – at least, she might be able to pick up a local station. Might give her an idea if she was near a town or something. She leaned over and turned on the knob. Static white noise flooded the van as she turned the knobs, frustration mounting as she tried to pick up something on _any_ frequency, but got nothing across the board. She growled as she switched it off. Probably the fog, you couldn't get through with a chainsaw. She shot a look to her glove compartment, considering taking out the map. She had to get to Brahms, and preferably before sundown. She decided against the map when she realized she didn't even know what highway she was on.

But the glove compartment seemed intent on catching her attention anyway. It beeped.

Rachel's head swiveled. The beeping went on, before Rachel realized what it was. Keeping one eye on the road, she leaned over and opened the glove compartment. She plucked the chirping cell phone and regarded it for a moment before raising it to her ear. She wondered who could be calling – this was just her emergency phone, in case she crashed her van and need to call a tow or an ambulance. No one knew its number, not even she remembered what it was. She wasn't exactly much of a talker.

"Hello?"

Her mysterious caller was silent for several seconds, then came a hiss, like a recording was being played. Rachel frowned and leaned forward, eyes narrowing as she strained her hearing to its maximum. She thought she could almost make out something in the hiss, almost like a voice –

When a sudden, loud rush of static blasted out of the speakers and assailed Rachel's right ear. She cried out, yanking the cell phone away as it continued to spackle much like the radio had done before. It landed on the passenger's seat, blasting white noise so much Rachel momentarily worried it would blow out the speakers, when it started to whine.

It started out quietly, hiding underneath the static, but in the space of seconds it loomed in intensity, a high-pitched screaming tone cutting through the air and jabbing into her head. The woman cried out in surprise and pain, skull feeling like it was splitting. Intense pain flooding her system, she let go of the wheel with both hands and grabbed at the cell phone, randomly pressing buttons in an attempt to silence the device, but it failed to respond. The sound was taking control of her mind, all she could think of, pounding through her brain, the whine now developing, sounding bizarrely like air raid sirens as her head threatened to explode. Rachel grabbed blindly with her left hand and found the door handle, yanked, and felt air whip into the still moving van. She flung the cell phone out, the clanging disappearing more speedily than it came as the speeding vehicle left the item behind. Rachel pulled the door closed and slumped against the wheel. She opened her eyes, ears still ringing.

Which gave her a perfect view of the result of her little seizure. The van had gone off the highway and was heading straight for a deep ditch. Rachel yanked the wheel to the side, pulling the van onto the asphalt and overshot. The side of the van hit the concrete median, sparks flying up against the metal side of the door. Rachel tried to bring the maverick vehicle under her control, but it refused to co-operate. The van flew into the highway's shoulder for a few split seconds before a black shape loomed out of the fog. Rachel was only halfway to the brake when the front of the vehicle smashed into the object, she heard the sound of breaking glass and everything went immediately black.


	3. Pleasant Discoveries

E.P.O. : My first reviewer! Have a cookie. Yeah, I guess the whole car crash bit is a tad overused, but a SH fanfic without it is like an Ahnold movie without a body count, or an Olympics competition without steroids! Too much to expect, particularly from me. Glad to hear your thoughts.  
  
I also have bad news for anyone else reading this. If you notice that the writing seems somewhat primitive, that's because I'm writing this - and I assume all future chapters - in Notepad rather than Microsoft Word. For some reason, seems not to like my Word files - entire sections in italics and stuff like that. I apologize for any inconvenience.  
  
CHAPTER TWO  
  
"Uuuunnnggghhhh."  
  
The woman blinked, slowly coming to. She opened her eyes, a terrible pounding in her head. She shifted and assessed her condition: leaning against a seatbelt that appeared to have done it's job rather well, and staring at the steering wheel, which had done a much poorer job deploying its airbag. The woman blinked a couple more times, trying to clear her head (which felt like it was filled with cotton balls, pressing against the sides of her skull with dull throbs emanating at the rate of her heartbeat). Her eyes slowly moved up to the windshield, and the spiderweb of cracks that had materialized there. She turned her eyes back to the steering wheel and noticed that it was coloured with a few spots of blood. Not many - little enough so that she had missed it the first time she'd looked, just barely conscious - but a few, three or four crimson spots on the gray covering. She spent a second wondering exactly where they had come from before a realization struck her, raising at hand to her forehead and brushing at it with her fingers. It was sticky and moist. The fingers probed further upward, under her bangs. An inch above her hairline, She gasped lightly as a knife of pain flashed out from under her fingers and lanced across her skull, traveling down her spine and making her cringe.  
  
She reached up and grabbed the review mirror on the windshield. It was currently showing the road to the rear of her van, a dozen or so feet of black asphalt before being swallowed up by billows of gray fog. For the first time in about twelve years or so - the time she'd had the van - she adjusted it away from the rear and inspected her own reflection.  
  
Her entire forehead was swallowed up by semi-dried blood whose origin seemed to be about the location of the wound she had brushed earlier. The blood narrowed into a trail at her eyebrows, a stream circling the left eye while her right remained clean. The bloody trail continued, cutting into several small rivets that crossed her cheek and brushed her nose until they came to the end of her chin. She looked down, and noticed that the area just under her neck was spotted by a half dozen or so red spots that looked bright enough to be fruit punch, but she knew to be blood.  
  
"God damn it," she muttered, closing her eyes and pinching her nose. She shot another look out the windshield, and was suddenly struck by the fact that she hadn't heard another van on this road, as well as that it was unbelievably foggy. She tried to remember if it had been like this before the accident. She couldn't.  
  
As a matter of fact, she couldn't remember anything about the trip. Or why she was in the van. Or what she had for breakfast this morning.  
  
The woman began to panic, knew it, and crushed it. She forced her breathing to stay steady, and closed her eyes. She held out her hands and began counting off things with her fingers.  
"Okay. My name is Rachel Paula Jones. I write novels for a living and doing okay, though I'm still waiting for one to go bestseller. I bought this van, uh...a decade ago or so...twelve years? I live in the town of Kiren. I was born in raised in the U.S. I have British, Ukrainian and...a little bit of Brazilian in my family background. I'm thirty-six years old, thirty-seven in five months. I'm agnostic, although I went to Catholic school in my youth. Um - I take showers rather than baths, sometimes for an hour at a time 'cuz I like showers. My shoes are steel-toe..."  
  
Okay, Rachel, murmured her brain reassuringly. You don't seem to have any major personal memory loss. Not the big bits, anyway, but you're going to have to look at what details you've got. Let's see if we can find out how far back your amnesia goes, hmmn?  
  
"Okay," she mumbled, "start close - " She grabbed the nearest memory. "Noon. August the twelfth. Just eaten a sandwich for lunch. Sat down to write. Managed to get a full chapter done, pretty good - looked up and saw I'd spent three hours just sitting there writing, my wrist was really sore. Told myself I'd go over the chapter tomorrow, but since I'd done so well in one day I decided I'd treat myself to a movie. Went out and caught some zombie flick. Wasn't very good, plot was thin, tried to be an action plot but couldn't even get that. Thought they could substitute tits for writing. At least the theater was empty. Fight scene at the end sucked. Walked out, refilled my drink, but the mall started to crowd up and I got out of there. Went home to my apartment, uh, I think it was...six o'clock then. Made myself some macaroni and cheese, ate it out of the pot while watching the news. Uh, I think I spilled some on my shirt. Uh..." it was getting harder to remember. Her mental images were sketchy, ideas rather than total scenes forming in her head. She strained. "I said something like 'damn' or 'hell' but minor, not anything more than that. At about eight o'clock I decided that the next day would be a good day to drive...someplace, so I had better get a good night's sleep. I...showered, got into bed. Still tired from the writing, so I think I got to sleep rather soon. And...the next day..."  
  
Nothing. To the best of her knowledge, she had woke up the next morning in her crashed van. There wasn't any soap opera fuzzy flash of memory, or anything just out of reach - any memories she would have had were just plain gone. She spied her digital watch, on her left wrist, and checked the date. The date, apparently, was '13'. Unless she had forgotten a whole month, which would be a whale of a coincidence, all she had lost was today. She breathed a sigh of relief.  
  
...where the hell was everyone?  
  
Normally Rachel would have been thankful, but she was just in a car accident and someone should have helped. She cast an annoying look out the window to her side, seeing gray fog. She opened the door and stepped out.  
  
The only other object she saw besides the rolls of cloud was that which her van had crashed against, some sort of sign. She pushed it up with her hand and read what she could. It was partially obliterated by the crash, but she could make out most of the words.  
  
WELCOME TO SILENT HILL, it said in an unimaginative script. Below this was the half word POPULAT before the rest, and the number that would have followed, were taking by the splintering of the sign against the hood of her vehicle. Rachel let the sign drop and frowned. Silent Hill. She knew that name - from where, though? Silent Hill, goddammit, she knew that, she -  
  
Rachel snapped her fingers. Of course! Silent Hill was just off of Brahms! Rachel had spent hours poring over maps, trying to find a way to Brahms, and she remembered that Silent Hill was some little place barely a little ways away. Like a half hour drive or so. Explained what she was doing here, too, and what drive she was going to take - she was probably taking that much-planned trip to Brahms before she got lost (probably in this damned fog) and...crashed, somehow. Rachel still didn't have the memories of earlier today, but she could piece at least this together. She still didn't know how she crashed, though. It wasn't as if the sign could explain that.  
  
Rachel frowned and cast an eye over her van. It didn't look too bad, but the front was crumpled and it sure wasn't going to drive again, not without repair. Rachel sighed, got back into the van, and opened the glove compartment, reaching for her cell phone.  
  
Except it wasn't there. Rachel frowned heavily, annoyance covering her features. There were the road maps, a half empty pack of gum and yes, a pair of gloves - but no cell phone. Where could it be? It wasn't as if she was calling her pals every ten minutes. Hell, this was the one sole purpose she had the thing, to call for help in the case of an accident!  
  
Rachel exited the car, leaned against the side, and pinched her nose. "Ah, Rachel, you ditz..." Okay, so it was gone. She'd most likely had one of her absent-minded episodes again, which tended to happen, especially when she was thinking about her writing. She'd probably been charging it in preparation of the trip and forgotten to take it with her this morning. "I'm such a stupid ass."  
  
Sighing, she pushed herself off the car and looked in the direction of the sign, townward. "Oh well, could be worse," she mumbled, "at least I'm on the edge of a town. Just have to walk a bit, that's all."  
  
She began to walk. The fog swallowed her whole without a sound.  
  
Rachel rubbed her arms. It was chilly, which was odd, given that it was mid-August. The woman gave an eye to her digital watch, confirming her suspicions. Night was falling. Also, she had been walking for over an hour.  
  
Where in the hell WAS everybody?! Silent Hill wasn't exactly state capital, she knew, but she was some miles into town and hadn't spotted so much as another human being. It was like the fates themselves had intervened to hamper her. All she wanted was a tow, was that too much? Maybe a cop that could help her figure out how she had crashed, or a doctor to make sure she hadn't knocked something serious loose in her head. But this was like a bad joke. She had passed by several parked cars but none driving. She'd also spotted a few pay phones, but there must have been a problem with the phone lines; every one she picked up had thrown out nothing but static.  
  
By this time, at least, some of the cotton had been removed from the inside of her head and she could at least form some complex thoughts, though she still had a killer migraine. She cast another look to her right. She'd finally entered the town proper - she had seen some buildings before, but they had mostly been abandoned warehouses with all the windows smashed, or rickety barns with caved-in roofs. Now, though, there was a row of suburb homes to her right. They didn't look much better off, but at least they had cars in their driveways. Rachel wanted to walk up to one, but had this terrible taboo feeling, as if actually knocking on a stranger's door was a good way to get herself run out of town, and slash or killed. She was covered in blood, right? Maybe they'd think she was some sort of psychotic killer. Maybe if she started running up someone's walk, they'd think she was going to attack them, take out some shotgun and blow her away...  
  
No, that's a lie. Her mind was hissing at her, that supposed voice of rationality that could speak independently of whatever she was really thinking. You're afraid of knocking on someone's door because you're afraid of talking to an actual person, aren't you?  
  
It was probably true. Her parents - Mr. And Mrs. Jones, if they were actually married and that was actually her last name - shouldn't have been allowed to take care of themselves, let alone a child. She'd never gotten the full story, but apparently there was some sort of drug problem and she'd been taken away after three months. She'd been passed through foster home after foster home, never spending more than a few months in each, never - as she'd later been able to surmise - forming a lasting relationship with parental figures. No friends, no siblings...  
  
Long story short, Rachel didn't like people. Never got a chance to. Even when she'd hit eighteen and was legally capable of actually staying in one place for over a year she just - couldn't do it. Stay in one place or make friends. Rachel was a loner, a recluse. People scared her, made her feel vulnerable, like they were peering at her, examining her like some sort of specimen in a petri dish...  
  
But you know that isn't true. It's all in your head. And when you figured that out, that's when you decided, didn't you? Not to be a slave to this sociophobia any longer. Not to let it control you. Do you want to let this disorder run your life? Because if a car accident isn't enough to get you to knock on a door, that's what it is. A controller. You're its slave. If you want to beat it, you're going to have to take the first step and knock on one of those doors.  
  
Stiffly, she turned off the road and began to walk up towards the house directly to her right. Its black windows stared out at her from its white front like weasel's eyes, the front door - hanging open - like some dumbly gaping mouth. "Not gonna let it win," she mumbled without realizing it, feet stepping into the stiff grass that rustled as it snapped under her weight, "Not stronger than me. Atta girl, Rachel..."  
  
She hesitated in front of the open door. Why would anyone leave their door open? Not in this fog. Was there a problem? It was odd, you didn't do that, not in Kiren at least -  
  
letting it control you you're letting it control you being its slave  
  
The door opened inward. Rachel put her hand through the doorway and knocked on it, the sound of her knuckles hitting wood tiny and insubstantial. Fidgeting, Rachel looked around the wooden edge of the portal. No doorbell. There was no answer to her pathetic little tapping either. Suddenly, before she could think the thought through, she stuck her head into the doorway, leaning in, and barked out words:  
  
"Hey! Is anyone home? I was in a car accident!"  
  
No answer. Rachel looked around, wondering who would leave their door open when they weren't home, and saw something on the left wall. Handprints, in blood. It was bright red - fresh. Eyes widening, she took a step inside. Dust flew up from the brittle hardwood floor under her sneaker's rubber sole, but she didn't notice. The handprints were well defined and unsmeared, as if someone had pressed their palms against the wall, at face height. A few trails dribbled towards the floor from under the heels of the palms. The prints were close together, as if their creator had expected them to be seen and had deliberately placed them so - though, for what possible reason, Rachel couldn't possibly imagine.  
  
Her eyes wandered, and the woman noticed that the blood went further than just a pair of handprints. A few feet further inside the house, along the wall, was a smear of blood - as if something had sprayed the liquid in a quick spurt, as if from a water gun or artery. Rachel crept forward, transfixed, following the smear. The line of blood petered out after about six feet or so, but about a foot or so later there were several large spatters of blood on the wall, closer to the ground. Her eyes followed as the spotty trail went still further, and still closer to the floor, before they finally met the hardwood. It kept going.  
  
There were about a half dozen or so spots of blood on the hardwood, before the hardwood itself gave way to tile. The hallway had opened up into a kitchen, black and cigarette-stain-yellow checkers on the floor. A few more spots of blood, increasingly tiny and infrequent, led across the tile until a large puddle of red sat at the foot of a wooden, four-legged table. Rachel had no clue as to the origin before the puddle jumped as a droplet fell into it. Her eyes raised up to the table, where a tiny solid trail of blood led to the edge. The trail could be led halfway across the table to its source: leaking out of the end of a barrel of a gun.  
  
The woman just stood there, mouth agape, staring at the gun. She honestly could not think of any appropriate reaction to make to finding out she had followed a trail starting with bloody handprints to a bleeding gun. She cocked her head to the side, studying the firearm. She wasn't exactly an expert on guns, although she had an idea as to how they worked, and had never even liked them much. It was a long, black and blue semiautomatic, looking somehow graceful and deadly at the same time. Why it was bleeding was, though, a total mystery. In any case, she sure wasn't going to take it - she didn't need it, she didn't own it, and she most certainly did not want it. She yanked her eyes away, and spotted something moving out of the corner of her eye.  
  
She took a step backward in shock before realizing she was looking at her own reflection. Over a dull stainless steel sink at the edge of the kitchen stood a mirror, and through the dust on its surface Rachel could vaguely make out her shape, moving identically to herself.  
  
She walked over and used her sleeve to wide the dust off the mirror. In retrospect, it was a good thing she hadn't run into anyone. She was even bloodier than she had been able to make out in her van's review mirror. It practically covered one side of her face. It was even in her bangs! Rachel grimaced, then shot a look down to the sink, then back up to her face, then to the sink again.  
  
Well...why not?  
  
The water drummed loudly against the bottom of the sink. Rachel's hands, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, rubbed against each other, cupped some of the cold liquid and brought it to her face. She rubbed against the dry blood, causing the water to splash down pink.  
  
After a few minutes she looked up and gave a small smile of relief. The blood was more or less gone and she looked normal again, if a bit red from rubbing. She'd even managed to get out the bit of blood that had been in her bangs. Hesitantly, she brought her fingers up above her hairline again, probing a few inches past her bangs...  
  
Touch brought pain, although she was expecting it and didn't gasp this time. Carefully, she probed with her fingers - a clotted gash, probably caused by her steering wheel and itself the cause of her migraine and memory loss. Rachel lowered her hand and leaned forward, hands clutching the edge of the sink and her forehead touching the cool glass of the mirror. Had to get a doctor asap, no doubt, that kind of thing was no laughing matter. Maybe if she -  
  
Crrrrrk.  
  
Rachel's train of thought flew off the tracks and her attention shifted. "Oh, shit," she murmured, very quietly. Someone was home - the type of someone to leave a gun on their dinner table - and she was in their house, unannounced. But she had a reasonable explanation, right? The door was open, the wall was covered with blood - she'd thought there was trouble, etc, etc. Rachel found herself staying silent all the same - she just needed a second, figure out exactly what she was going to say - when she looked up at the mirror and saw movement coming into the kitchen behind her. "Showtime," she mumbled to herself as she turned around.  
  
"I - " she started, then stopped dead, staring at the thing that had entered the room. The bottom could have passed for a hunched over man, in dim light. Bloody, shapeless pants led to swollen, rotting shoes or boots - it was difficult to tell with their level of degradation. Above the pants, was what could possibly pass for a shirt or a jacket, a dull red-brown colour, hanging limply open. The arms ended in meaty hands, the left one holding a two-by-four. The head, if you could call it that, had no face, rather something like a tumor; lumpy and bulging. A mop of black fur represented the hair.  
  
That was the more normal section of the creature. The reason it was stooped over was the aberration on its back. A woman's naked and starved-looking upper body, only gray and apparently skinless, rose from the back, attached at what would have been the waist by one stump and several attacked strands of skin. Muscles stood out clearly on the streamlined form, abs and biceps in clear view. The bald head seemed connected with the right shoulder by multiple strands of skin similar to its waist. Its head shook and twitched as if attempting to tear itself free. Its eyes were empty sockets, and its mouth was open. It gave out a long feminine moan as the creature shambled forward.  
  
"Buh - buh - I - " Rachel's mouth worked, but her brain was elsewhere, watching the female half thrash on the male section's back as its bloody clothing flapped about. "I - I - I - was in a car - car crash, I'm not a thief I - " That was when the thing sung its two-by-four into her, hitting her in the side and throwing her to the floor.  
  
She scrambled back on hands and knees, eyes wide with panic. "Stop! I'm not going to hurt you! Stop! I'm not - " She got to her feet as the thing swung its two-by-four again, hitting her in the gut and knocking her backward. She hit the table, crashing to her back on the wood, gasping for breath. The table cracked at her weight and the entire thing crashed to the ground. Rachel's eyes opened and she saw the black pistol six inches in front of her. She snatched it up, scrambled back from the hermaphroditic creature and pointed the handgun as she got up, back against the wall. The monster was between her and the room's only exit.  
  
"Get away from me!" She shouted, both hands gripping the gun still wet from the sink. "Stop it now! Just let me out, or I'll shoot, I swear to - "  
  
The female half made a loud wailing sound as the creature lurched forward. Rachel's arm twitched and she fired reflexively. A hole appeared in the left side of its gray, twitching chest, spraying some reddish-blackish-greenish substance onto the opposite wall. Still it came forward, and Rachel fired again, and again, and she wasn't even thinking or even there in her own body as the handgun went off over and over - somewhere far away, some whirling kaleidoscope of sights and sounds and confusion - until she suddenly snapped back and she was once again standing in the stale dusty kitchen, deathgrip on the pistol that clicked pitifully as she pointed it at the body of the hermaphroditic creature lying still on the ground.  
  
"Uh - uh - I - uh...muh..." Rachel blinked as her arms slowly lowered, handgun pointing at the floor before it fell out of her nerveless fingers and clattered against the yellow-black tile. She started to move very slowly, going in as wide a circle as the room would allow to avoid the monster's corpse until she came to the other side of the room, backing down the hall for a few steps before she turned and sprinted as fast as she possibly could, heading out the door and clearing the steps as her mind could only focus on getting the FUCK out of this town. 


	4. Road Closed to All Nonessential Traffic

CHAPTER THREE  
  
The mangy black cat limped across the road. Its yellow eyes scanned up and down, stringy fur clinging to its body. It stretched its mouth in a yawn, exposing its two remaining incisors to the air, before snapping its jaw back shut with a metallic sound. It growled as it pondered its empty stomach. Suddenly its head jerked up and peered into the fog. It could hear something approaching. The cat yowled and all but flew off the road.  
  
It was several seconds before the sounds of footsteps and panting could be heard, and a few more before Rachel emerged from the fog, fighting the grip of exhaustion as she ran at was what barely more than normal walking pace. Her steel-toed sneakers slapped against the ground and her joints creaked. But all the same, the writer's eyes lit up as she saw what was in front of her, finally coming out of the infinite mist.  
  
Her van.  
  
Rachel made it to the front of the vehicle and collapsed against it, wheezing as the final iota of strength went out of her legs. After a second, she flipped and pressed her back against the metal of the van, eyes darting about.  
  
Nothing.  
  
Rachel's shuddering gasps of air shook her entire body as she slid down the vehicle's side, face red from running. "God," she gasped, without realizing it. "Sweet jesus of god, oh my god, oh dear mother of christ - what was that thing, what in the name of heavenly lord oh my god oh my god oh my god, oh sweet - "  
  
From deep inside her van, something stirred. Rachel blinked, broken out of her trance. She looked down and saw that she had moved into a cross-legged position, hands subconsciously rolling her sleeves back down and playing with the buttons. She snapped her hands back, holding that position for a moment, before finally buttoning up the sleeves. She slowly stood up, leaning against the van before casting an eye through the window inside. She could identify the sound now.  
  
The van's radio was spewing static.  
  
Rachel opened the door and kneeled on the seat, curious despite herself. She fiddled with the radio's knob, but nothing came of it; it continued to hiss and spackle quietly. She shook her head. This was not the time! - she had a reason for being here.  
  
Edge of town. Rachel had no logical reason to think there would be more of the thing she killed, but...the town was deserted. It was colder than summer should ever be. Something was wrong with Silent Hill. She didn't know how what, or why, but it was dangerous and she had to get away. Rachel wished she could remember what had happened today before she had crashed...everywhere else could be just like this. She could only hope not...  
  
The static was getting louder, and Rachel tried to turn the radio off. No luck, it must have been broken in the crash. "Fucking fuck," she mumbled, in a bad mood. Walking along the highway did not sound like her idea of fun, however preferable to braving the town it was, especially now that night was ever closer - she checked her watch. Under an hour. At least it wouldn't be hard to follow...  
  
She yanked the keys out of the ignition and stepped out of the van, not bothering to close the door. She came around to the back of the minivan and opened the hatchback, looking inside. She usually kept a few things in the back for the sake of vehicle-related emergencies, as well as any other assorted bits of crap that could find their way back there. Rachel's eyes scanned the back.  
  
Spare tire? No. She pushed it aside. A baby blue blanket? Certainly not. She flung it out of the back of the minivan, not watching as it slowly settled towards the ground. A sturdy black flashlight caught her eye, the sort you can hold in one hand with the soft rubber button on the side. Maybe a club...no. Too light. She gave it a shove and it rolled to the rightmost of the inside of the vehicle. A pamphlet? Yeah, that sounds like an idea, papercut them to -  
  
"Yes!" It had been hidden under the pamphlet. Lying seductively, its stainless steel surface glinting at her lovingly, was a heavy tire iron. Rachel grabbed it by the end and smacked the rounded opposite into her palm. "Yeah," she mumbled to no one, not even herself. "Just in case I meet another of them...but I won't, I won't cause I won't and I'll be gone...  
  
"...just in case." The woman looked up, throwing her gaze all about her, as if afraid of tempting fate. She noticed something small and white out of her peripheral vision, almost imperceptible against the light fog. Her head snapped back, but it was tiny and lifeless - just a white dot drifting out of the sky...  
  
She reached out a hand and it landed in her palm, making no effort to dodge. It disappeared in a split second, but she knew what it was. A snowflake.  
  
Late August, and it was snowing...and...why did she care?! This town was going to kill her! Why in god's name should she give a rat's ass about snow? The ground could turn to rusty grates for all she cared, she was going to die if she stayed here! Before she had a gun and barely survived, if another of those things came at her, tire iron or no -  
  
Rachel turned outwards, along the highway and away from Silent Hill. She took one last look around - as if she could see anything through this fog - and started a brisk walk. Her footsteps went out into the world. Her footsteps were quick.  
  
And then, slower.  
  
Then they slowed again, hesitant, barely drifting forward.  
  
And then, they finally stopped - with the road. Rachel stared forward, eyes dead and unseeing, mind blown by what was before her. She had driven into town in this highway. She had to. She could see the skid marks from her tires on the road right up to what she was staring at. It wasn't possible, it couldn't...  
  
The road was blocked by a giant cement wall, like the sort you'd see in a bunker. Rachel was ready to cry. How? How could this actually exist? She had to have driven through this wall earlier this day! It wasn't just put up, she could see - it was pockmarked, with weird greasy red-brown stains and weeds sprouting up from its feet. There was even graffiti here and there; mostly the requisite oh-look-at-me-I-want-attention expletives, although there was one exception: spray-painted on with red paint. A larger circle with a slightly smaller circle inside, and three circles in a position wherein they would make up three points of a triangle. It was decorated further with various symbols, which may or may not have been part of the original design or added on later as independent graffiti. It was an interesting symbol, actually; though Rachel was in no position to care. She was rather more interested with the fact that her way out of town was blocked and she was going to die.  
  
"What...?" she murmured to herself. "What am I...oh my god, I'm going to die in this place - " Rachel suddenly looked up at a faint noise. She whirled, looking behind her. It was from her minivan, dimly visible through the fog and light snow - the static that was coming out of her radio earlier. A snowflake settled on the side of her nose and melted. She didn't notice. She slowly walked forward. There was more than white noise coming from the radio, she could hear. Dimly, below the hissing and crackling there was something slight, barely there - something high, tinny...sort of like a screech or, maybe san air raid siren?...  
  
Rachel reached the car, leaning against the side and slowly bringing her head forward towards the open door, ears straining. There was more to static and sirens in the sound, which by now had grown very loud. In fact, they seemed to merge together, somehow, in some way that wasn't quite random - and Rachel couldn't be sure, but somehow, they sounded purposeful, almost like words -  
  
WHAM! The sound went off as loud as a gunshot, right by Rachel's ear. The woman threw herself backwards in sudden shock, landing hard on her rear as she looked up. Something was on top of her minivan - something had landed on her minivan, as if it had jumped or been thrown - and it had hit hard enough to buckle the metal roof. Rachel stared up at it, standing against the backdrop of the white snow-speckled fog sky.  
  
It looked, in a word, bloated, though sickening, demonic, ghastly, deformed or horrifying would do in a pinch. It had no head that she could see, just a chunky rounded lump splattered with blood. No arms either - or more specifically, they ended in shattered stumps just halfway down the upper arm, ribbons of red flesh trailing from snapped bones. The torso was outrageously fat and round, shaped like a light bulb with the bulbous end downward, force of the mass straining against the skin of the gut. It shifted and Rachel could see that it only stuck out the front - the back was flat, bony. Near but not quite at the bottom two huge, muscular legs extended, thicker than tree trunks. They were long, too; if the creature had a head, it would probably top out to about seven feet tall. Past the legs, the entire bottom of the creature ended in one huge, ragged hole, blood dripping from its lips and painting the inside of its legs. The flesh, save for the blood splattered ends of the neck, arms and between its legs, was vibrant and pink and healthy and plump.  
  
It jumped off the van's roof - muscle under the skin of those gigantic legs rippling as it did so - and headed straight downwards towards Rachel. She rolled to the side, feeling the road's occasional pieces of a gravel poke into her back, as the two legs slammed into the highway where she had been. She could feel the shockwave. She scrambled to her feet, eyes locked onto the monster. She didn't even get the chance to turn to run before it lifted one leg and fired its grossly huge, four-toed foot at her. It slammed into her abdomen and threw her into the side of the van, hard. She had the distinct impression her lower body was being crushed as her lungs completely failed. Every ounce of oxygen was driven out of her chest and she couldn't get any of it back.  
  
Desperately the woman threw herself off the side of the van, swinging her tire iron downward and bringing the round end into the shoulder of the creature. She swung it again, fast, this time from the side to smack solidly into the protruding gut of the being. It stumbled backwards, shaking, and Rachel took a step forward with her tire iron ready to strike. But then its entire body flinched at once, in one giant spasm, before it stood rock still. Rachel jumped forward, landing in front of it and was about to drive the end of the tire iron into its gut again when the entire hole in the bottom of it suddenly exploded in fresh blackish blood. She looked down instinctively, feeling it slap against the bottom of her pants, as something suddenly erupted from the hole - what appeared to be the bloody top half of a human torso, still attached to the round gut - as if someone had been hiding inside and decided to stick their head out to say hello. There wasn't much out beyond the head and two clawed arms. The upside-down upper torso looked up at her as she stared open-mouthed and apparently reacted much faster than her, as it took the opportunity to grab her by the calves and yank.  
  
Rachel, still breathless, fell flat on her back. The upside-down segment of the creature screamed or squealed - some high pitched whining noise, anyway - as it hung from between the legs of the bloated original. The original, on the other hand, remained silent as it bent its legs. Somehow the woman could predict what it was going to do and pushed herself backwards with both arms, sliding across the ground. She struggled to bring air into her lungs; she able to take in small breaths, but it was nowhere near her normal capacity and black spots were forming in her vision.  
The bloated monstrosity flung itself forward, body slamming her. Rachel had managed to move herself out of the direct line of fire, saving herself from being crushed, but not totally. Some few hundred pounds of flesh slammed down on her legs, pinning her on the spot. She tried to yank her legs out from under the squirming mass but couldn't. Furiously, she sat up and took the tire iron in both hands, flipping it. She moved the sharp, pointed end meant for prying off the hubcap downwards and stabbed it into the blob, piercing its skin. Brackish black goo, wholly unlike the (almost comforting in comparison) red blood that coloured its arms, neck and groin, bubbled up from under the wound and dribbled down the back. The monster quaked and rolled off of Rachel, who rolled to her feet before the upper torso had a chance to grab her. Gritting her teeth in a frenzy, she drew her foot back and drove the steel toe of her sneaker into the side of the its bloated gut. She could feel something deep inside its belly crack and collapse under the might of her sweatshop merchandise, and drew back her foot again. The third kick split its skin, spitting black bile over the street, and after the sixth the creature had been reduced to a twitching, quivering heap. Rachel dropped to her knees and brought her tire iron down, hard, on the thing. The fleshball fell silent.  
  
Gasping and on the verge of unconsciousness, the novelist pushed herself to her feet and rested her forehead against the cool metal of the vehicle. After a minute the black went out of her vision, and she began to see one of everything again (although the crushing migraine still did not leave). Closing her eyes, she appeared to think for a minute before she traveled to the back of her hatchback and opened up. She shot another look down the hallway - the wall was invisible, indistinguishable in the oppressive rolling clouds of fog, but she couldn't doubt it was still there. She turned back to the open hatchback and withdrew the flashlight, checking the batteries.  
  
She would need it. Night was coming.  
  
Rachel, visibly shaking, sighed loudly and stalked past the van, not bothering to close the hatchback. She also deliberately drove her gaze away from the motionless corpse of the bloated creature. As she passed by the driver's seat door, she realized something.  
  
She shot a look in through the open doorway, though her evidence was not sight but sound, or rather the lack of it. The static had stopped. She stared and started to open the door wider, but two things stopped her. The first was that the static suddenly swelled against form the radio, although this time not nearly as loud. The second is that something grabbed her ankle.  
  
Rachel whirled and tried to yank her foot away, but the grip held firm - a red, clawed hand wrapped around like iron, attached to the skinny and bloody arm of the upper torso that had previously been sticking out from between the Bloated's (which was what Rachel had begun to term them) legs. It opened its head, thin and angular, impossibly wide - like that of a snake - exposing two rows of long, razor-like straight knives of teeth that bit down onto her sneaker. The steel toe held for the time being; needle points piercing the rubber but scraping along the metal. Rachel could see that the creature really didn't advance beyond the upper torso after all - at the point where the sternum would be on a normal human being the skin was ripped into long shreds that trailed on the ground behind it. The only thing that continued was a long, snakey tube that extended all the way back to inside the Bloated and leading up to where the belly would be. Fortunately, this mad it much lighter than the Bloated had been.  
  
Rachel tried to yank her foot out of the demon's mouth, but it held on. That was when she swung her foot to the side, slamming it against the side of the van. That was when it let go of her foot, falling to the ground with another of its high squeals. The novelist brought up her shoe and drove her heel down into the back of its head. There was a crunching noise and it dropped dead.  
  
Rachel stood there, staring down at the dead creature without a sound. After a second or two, she turned her eyes up to the sky.  
  
But only drifting snowflakes answered her gaze, slowly making their way toward her. 


	5. Tourist Welcoming Committee

CHAPTER FOUR 

Rachel's gaze dropped back down - though deliberately not far enough so that the corpses on the ground would come into her field of vision. Her gaze darted back to inside the van, radio once again silent.

_It spewed static when the Bloated was about to show up, and stopped after I killed it. It started up again when the Red Thing came to life and stopped again when I stomped on it. Is there some sort of connection_ - Rachel immediately stopped her mental processes, refusing to think about it further. _No. No. I'm not thinking about it. I won't. I can't._ A snowflake landed in her ear and Rachel shivered, suddenly aware of just how chilly it was. She looked around. There was nothing but snow and fog, but what did that mean? There could be any number of things just outside her vision. She couldn't stay here. They knew where her van was, it wasn't safe - the door couldn't even close now that the roof had been imploded.

Her grip on the tire iron tightened. She didn't need to check her watch anymore - night was not just close, it was here, the fog was turning from light gray to black. She lifted the flashlight and clicked it on. A strong beam of white light shone out and dissipated. Rachel clicked it off again, satisfied it worked - she didn't want to attract attention.

Something shifted behind her. Rachel pivoted, saw nothing, and started to move into the banks of dark gray, over expanses of crisp grass. She didn't dawdle.

0 0 0

Flickering fire off curved gold.  
Fingertips gliding upon the engraved images.  
Thumb walks the rims.  
Holy robe. Lawful sword. Stretched gut. Anguished scream.  
Murky earth.  
Metal, clean.  
Footsteps. It creaks, it closes, it locks.  
Lonely wineglass, filled soon.

0 0 0

Rachel's foot hit the asphalt. Perhaps it was blind luck that Rachel hadn't seen anything else since the van, but she was grateful. Taking out the flashlight, she turned it on and directed the beam about. Directly across the street was a phone booth; and just behind it a small diner, windows dark.

Rachel didn't care about the booth - the phones didn't work, and by the looks of the town there wasn't anyone that she could talk to anyway. The diner wasn't much better, looking dingy and angled and weird. She didn't want to stay in one place anyway, someplace she could be tracked and cornered - she had to keep moving, she to just find some place big enough so she could hide but also move about if she had to. Maybe she could find a place out of this town - Her light was still hovering over the diner's wide windowed front, still as her mind wandered. She snapped back to reality though, when the light dimly illuminated something at the back of the dingy restaurant. She brought the light back and saw it, for sure this time - a first aid kit.

The door wasn't locked. Rachel stepped into the room, musty and stale air filling her nostrils. The building seemed smaller on the inside than on the outside, ceiling uncomfortably low and every wall just a few feet away. Hopping the counter, she grabbed the first aid kit off the wall, a rusty handle grating under her fingers. It was light - far too light to be carrying any first aid supplies. Concerned, Rachel shook it and was awarded with a quiet rattling sound. She pulled the rectangular kit open.

Nothing fell out. No bandages. No antiseptic. No ampoules.

Frantically Rachel turned the kit upside down and shook it. One solitary object fell out; small and metal, bouncing off the countertop and falling to the floor. Rachel dropped to her elbows and knees and plucked it off the tile floor.

A small, rusty key. Turning it over in her hands, Rachel spotted the letters LH embossed into one side, but nothing else. Some medicinal wonder.

All the same, there would be no telling when she would need it. Rachel fished about and realized she still had the keys to her van in her pocket. She clipped it onto her key ring without much hope and exited the restaurant. She cast an eye about, wary of -

The phone rang. Rachel nearly jumped a foot in the air at the sudden noise before she realized it had come from the booth beside her. She stared at it open-mouthed as it rang again, before she leapt for the booth and passed through its entrance.

She snatched the receiver off the hook and shouted into the receiver. "Hello? Hello? Yes?"

There was silence for a few seconds, and then a click and a hiss, as if a tape was being played. It hissed for another second before a fakely enthusiastic voice flattened by recording began to crow at her.

"Welcome to the town of Silent Hill, one of the oldest settlements in America! We are happy to have you. We here at Silent Hill want to do our best to make your visit the greatest that it can be! Whether you're just stopping for the night, spending spring break with in the greatest place on Earth or looking to put down roots, we're sure you'll find something in our fair town that will go far beyond whatever you expected.

"Many people that come to Silent Hill are taken back by its beauty. No one leaves this place exactly as they entered. There's something here for everyone! What will you like in our fair town? Will it be our giant amusement park, with our award-winning roller coaster and countless rides and attractions? Robbie the Rabbit awaits you in Lakeside! Or will it be our great lake? Whether for swimming, boating, or just watching the sunset from the shore, Toluca Lake is always tranquil, clear and beautiful. Our any number of our fantastic restaurants and establishments? The staff in Silent Hill is eager to serve you. And when you're finally ready to spend the night, we'll be happy to house in our four-star hotel Lion Heights! In our four-star hotel Lion Heights! In our four-star hotel Lion Heights!"

The tape, or whatever, was skipping. Rachel, on the other hand, was staggered. She slumped against the side of the booth as the falsely cheery voice repeated the name of the hotel repeatedly into her ear. Her eyes drifted upward and she saw something sitting on top of the phone. She stood up straight and grabbed it, turning it over in front of her eyes as she hung up the phone.

It was map of the city, Silent Hill.

Rachel's gaze darted back to the top of the phone. _Was that there before? _She opened up the map. It was mostly blue and brown, muted colours. A church represented by a faded pink tone, an odd black smudge - but a spot of bright red grabbed her eyes. It looked like a splash of ink, circling a street corner near the border of the city.

_You are here, _Rachel thought. She blinked and peered harder, turning the map over in her hands, looking for a clue, looking for some way this could be possible. She was still staring at the map when a gunshot rang out through the air.

Rachel whirled, staring out the booth, but saw nothing. The shot must have been around the corner somewhere. She jumped out and heard another shot. Now that she was ready for it, it was easier to tell where it had come from. She broke off into a run towards the sound.

_Where there's gunshots there's people, more people to get me out _- Rachel passed by an alleyway and would have kept on going, but a third gunshot rang out from the direction of said alleyway. She turned and dashed down it, eyes pointed towards the foggy opposite exit. She reached it and jumped out of the alleyway, looking about.

It didn't occur to Rachel that the gunshots would have to be actually at something until she saw a figure lurch inhumanly out of the fog to her right. She staggered back, but before she could grab at her tire iron a fourth and final gunshot rang out. The dark shape, indistinct in the fog but that it looked humanoid with something long and thin jutting from one arm, fell to the ground.

Rachel refused to look at its corpse, mind oblivious to anything but the thought of more people. She turned in the direction of the last gunshot and saw a man, standing on the raised porch of some indistinct building.

He was young, low to mid twenties. His red hair and shoulders were lightly dusted with the falling snow - like herself, she supposed. He was just a little overweight, the extension of his condition hidden under a white T-shirt and another shirt open overtop - black, with red and silver oriental-looking dragons crawling over the back. His blue jeans looked new and expensive, his hiking boots less so. He had a smattering of freckles under his wide blue eyes. These eyes moved and caught sight of Rachel and in a second he was turning and pointing his revolver at her with his right hand. He pulled the trigger.

_Click_. It was empty, a fact that probably saved the woman's life. His aggressive glare took a second to transform into one of confusion.

"Who are you?" he asked, eyebrows raised quizzically.

Rachel took a step backwards. She was intimidated by the gun; never mind that it was obviously empty, she could see straight down the barrel and it scared her.

"Uh - " The still lit flashlight beam waved back and forth in the air as Rachel's hands twirled independently. "Uh - Rachel Jones. I - I'm not going to hurt you."

The man's aim lowered. "I don't know you..."

"I'm from...out of town."

The man stared for a moment more, and then seemed to check himself. He lowered his head and put two fingers to his temple, then raised it again. Wherever the kid's mind had gone to protect itself from this town, it had snapped back to reality. The suspicious, aggressive look was gone. It had been replaced by an expression of repentant vulnerability, eyes huge and sorrowful and the guy in general looking about twelve years old.

"I'm so sorry," he began, licking his lips. The gun hung limply at his side. "I almost - oh my god, I almost shot you. If the gun had been loaded..."

"Yeah." Rachel did not want to think about it.

"I - my name's Bradley. Ernest, actually, but Bradley is my last name and I like it - I like it better. I was just - defending myself against that..." he gave a look over Rachel's shoulder at this, but she refused to turn around. "...thing. That thing. And when you came around the corner I just - well..." He gave a pathetic little shrug, looking miserable. He avoided her eyes. "I'm not - I'm about as tough as the name 'Ernest Bradley' implies, unfortunately."

"Yeah. Yeah, uh - do you know what's going on here, Bradley?" asked Rachel, hoping to find a more comfortable topic but not really knowing what to say.

"Err - no. Nothing. All I've been able to do so far is, well...survive, really. And I haven't been succeeding by a large margin, either, really, kind of." His voice cracked on the last syllable. He hit his chest lightly with his fist. "Ahem. Sorry. Err...do you? Do you have anything - know anything?"

Rachel shook her head. "Sorry. I - no, I don't. Nothing." The wearing off of adrenaline was making her wary of anyone live. He was staring at her.

"What are you doing here, Rachel Jones? Why are you here?"

"Me? Nothing. I've got no idea what's going on, I'm..." She crossed her arms, breathing shallow and fast. "Bad luck, I guess."

Bradley was leaning over the railing lining the porch, one hand supporting himself and the other holding the pistol. He looked helpless, innocent - it was just a natural question after all - "Are you sure, Rachel Jones? Absolutely nothing?" His eyes were wide and honest and he sounded like he wanted desperately to figure out _something _- his age was down to five years old, now, and it was starting to become amazing he could actually fire a gun - and Rachel at the moment couldn't think of anything that would be better right now than for the world to swallow her up.

"Nothing - nothing! I don't know!" Rachel swallowed her voice and took out her tire iron, as if expecting it to help. "I - uh - uh - nothing."

Bradley stared at her for another moment, then something seemed to flicker behind his big eyes. "There's one thing," he said, slowly.

"Yes?" Rachel didn't realize it, but she had just taken a half-step backwards.

"I'd...steer clear of the church, if I were you," he said hesitantly, almost guiltily. He shot a look up at the sky, at nothing Rachel could see. "I'm - I'm sorry," he mentioned once again.

"Don't be! I'm fine! No harm no foul!" Rachel was dimly aware she was shouting but saw very little reason to stop.

"Good luck, Rachel Jones. Be careful," was the last thing Bradley said, loading his revolver. He opened the door on the porch and crept inside, closing the door behind him. Rachel saw half of this at most. By the time he had said "good luck" she had turned and escaped at what was barely slow enough for a trot. She had switched off the flashlight in a subconscious attempt to keep him from following her.

It was two blocks later that she could get herself to slow down. She stood stock still in the street, eyes closed, breathing heavily, both hands on the tire iron. She could feel snowflakes landing on her burning flesh but didn't budge.


	6. Red Light, Green Light

Before I begin this chapter I'd like to make a couple of statments. First of all, many thanks to those who have left reviews, especially E.P.O. Secondly, I would like to recommend the following Silent Hill fanfictions:  
Silent Hill: Ashes to Ashes  
Silent Hill: Cracks in the Ice  
Sin's of the Father

If you have not at least checked out these stories already, I highly urge you to do so. rubs hands together Now, time to get on with the show, no?

CHAPTER FIVE

A crappy ballpoint pen drew a blue line across the map, pointing to an intersection. At the other end of the line were two messily scrawled words. MET BRAD.

Rachel put the cap back on her pen and stuck it back in her pocket. She then folded up the map, not wanting to be a static target. She cast a nervous eye about the fog; far off, the red of traffic lights caught her eyes, barely penetrating the mist. She turned towards one, ninety degrees away from the direction of Bradley, and it immediately turned red.

_That's a bad omen_. It was a coincidence, of course. She knew that.

To her left, a light turned green.

Curious. Still, it wasn't as if Rachel had anywhere else to go. She didn't really have any place to be, and the green light was as good a direction as any - anywhere would be acceptable really. She just had to get off the streets. Find a good place to hide, something...she went in the direction of the light, ears pricked for any more monsters.

She made the light before anything could attack her. As she moved into the intersection, the traffic light instantly switched to red - no yellow. It didn't mean anything, of course, but the suddenness of it caused Rachel to skip a beat and stop momentarily.

It was to her right that she could see a red light, a ways away but cutting through the fog. As the one in front of her went red, it had gone green. Slowly, Rachel turned towards the peripheral image, standing still. She stared at it for several seconds before checking her watch. It was 6:03.

She continued to stare, but the light didn't change. It was a long time before she checked her watch again.

6:09.

_That's a long green light._

With much forcing, her right foot finally started forward, carrying her towards the green light. The other followed, and it wasn't long before she had reached the green light; she stood at the end of the individual road, right before the stop line that signaled the beginning of the intersection. Rachel hesitated, foot in midair, and cast a look up at the light. Green.

The shoe came down past the stop line. Red.

Beyond it, a previously crimson light turned green.

Rachel pulled out her tire iron, lifting it to a striking position in her right hand. She also held her flashlight in her left, though she kept it off. Slowly, she edged forward.

Nothing happened before she reached the next light. As expected, it turned off and another switched to green, to her left this time. However, along this path there came something behind her - a sound, sort of like a hose being dragged through gravel. Rachel paused, then turned around, trying to peer through the fog without the aid of the flashlight. Perhaps it wouldn't notice her...

No luck. Rachel just made out a dim shadow in the fog before something long and thin shot out and slapped her on the side of the face. It didn't have much weight behind it, which was good because it had more than enough speed and her head snapped to the side. Rachel reeled, regained her footing, and saw the long thin weapon - all that she could tell in the darkness was that it was sort of like a whip - snap through the air to her right. She raised the flashlight and clicked it on.

It was humanoid in shape, at least. Tall and mostly gangly, though she noticed its shoulders were broad and obscenely bloated biceps stood out on its upper arms. It had no face; where it would have been, on the front of the head, it was simply rounded smoothness. There was not a spot of hair on the body, including the head, she noticed as it lumbered forward, though its skin was covered in blood and pus colours. Its left hand even had a rudimentary hand, underdeveloped fingers like thick sausages and no thumb; however, its right arm simply continued into a long tendril several feet long, finally ending some sharp metal sliver, knife-sharp. It jerked back its arm, and Rachel realized she was right - it _was _a whip.

She was still taking in the image when the tendril flew forward, but this time it didn't hit her with its side. This was better aimed, and its bladed tip hit her instead. The edge slashed along the inside of her left elbow, going right through the sleeve and effortlessly cutting into the soft flesh. A fine spray of blood droplets was leased into the air before she even felt the pain. With a cry, she dropped the flashlight. Its hard plastic side hit the asphalt, bounced once, and continued to shine upon the monster.

It yanked its whip back again and was about to launch it forward when Rachel charged. She leapt forward, heaving her tire iron, not willing to let it get a strike on her again. The tire iron's stainless steel head smashed the side of the monster's, but it barely reacted. Its left hand came up, uppercutting her chin, but it was clumsy and ineffectual and did barely more than throw her off her rhythm. The tire iron came down again on the thing, this time on its shoulder, letting loose a dribble of maroon blood. Rachel took a step to the side in order to avoid another blow from the malformed hand, but wasn't concerned, not really. It wasn't as dangerous as the others, this Whip-Arm - as she had already termed it in her mind - if you stayed up close. You couldn't really use a whip up clos-

The long tendril arm snapped towards her, much more precise than any inanimate strip of leather. Its side hit the left of her throat, but didn't knock her away. It held on, and the tendril beyond kept up the curve around her throat until it had encircled it tightly once, twice, thrice - Rachel suddenly lost count as it tightened. She couldn't breathe.

She would have reached up to try and pull it off, but she was yanked off her feet towards the Whip-Arm. She landed on her knees at its feet, one hand still holding the tire iron. She tried to pull away, but to no avail. She could feel steel muscle under its smooth and oddly dry skin. Wildly, she whacked at the tendril with her tire iron, hoping for some reaction. It wracked under the blows, skin splitting, but held firm.

But, more suddenly than it had grabbed her, it let her go. Specifically, the tendril drew back and _unwound _itself from her neck, the entire length sliding off like a string being pulled from a top, until finally its blade slashed through her skin and was gone. The blade cut through the skin starting at the back of her neck right up to behind the left side of her jaw. Blood flew as Rachel spun, thrown to the ground.

A slight bit more force, and it'd have broken her neck.

A slash in a slightly different place, and it would have severed an artery.

A cut slightly deeper, and it would have seperated her vertebrae.

Time to go.

Rachel bounded to her feet and dashed for the green light, plucking the torch off the ground as she did so. She got two steps before she felt the tendril wrap around her left ankle and yank, throwing her to the ground, but didn't stop. She was kicking when she hit the ground and half-crawled half-jumped for two seconds before regaining her footing and moving back up to a run.

She could hear the Whip-Arm's footsteps behind her, giving chase, but didn't dare look back. She passed into one intersection, saw her light go red, and another green. She turned and kept running. The Whip-Arm, based on what she could hear, not only kept up with her but seemed to do so without much trouble. She couldn't slow down for anything.

Red light. Green light. Red light. Green light. The torch's beam cut through the fog in front of her, bobbing as she ran, when it suddenly illuminated a sign in front of her. The road she was on ended in a T-intersection, just beyond it the shadowy shape of some large building against the fog and night. The sign had a name she recognized: Lion Heights. However, this was all pushed into the back of her mind when her green light turned red, and all the other red lights…didn't change.

Rachel looked all around without slowing down, her head turning frantically, but there were only bright red spots in the black sky. Her looking for green light gained her only one thing - a short fall, as she tripped over the unseen curb.

She slammed against the ground, but the most pain by far lanced out from her hip as something seemed to stab into her skin. _Must have landed on my goddamn keys_, she thought, getting back up even though she had run out of places to go. Illogically, madly, her mind turned to her key ring in her pocket, little metal bastards with little metal teeth, for her van and her apartment and her -

L H.

Still prone, Rachel turned her flashlight's beam once again on the sign.

Lion Heights.

But it couldn't be - it was a coincidence, it wasn't as if -

A metal blade stabbed forward, drawing a crimson line across her lower back. Rachel pushed herself to her feet instantly, already running for the hotel's entrance. Her feet flew across the frosted grass lawn, before she saw a pair of glass doors directly in front of her. She didn't even slow down as she came for them, fishing for her keys in her pocket and just yanked them out as she smashed into the thick glass and metal. She bounced off and then bent over, stabbing the rusty key into the lock and turning as a metal blade rang out on the doorframe at standing head height. The door opened and she fell inside, pulling the door closed after her. She feverishly locked it behind her just before the Whip-Arm slammed into the door, its emotionless nonface staring at her. Rachel turned and kept running, the features of the employee's room flashing past her as she heard the Whip-Arm banging on the door behind her. She grabbed the next door and flew through, landing in what looked like a storeroom before staggering and finally falling to her knees, wheezing exhaustedly.

Then there was a scuffle, something dragging across the concrete floor. Rachel's head rose sharply, looking though the gloom of the poorly-lit storeroom as a figure had emerged from behind some pile of Christmas decorations.

The first she saw was a pair of black boots in a sort of combat or military style, leading up to two legs in what appeared to be moderately loose-fitting black leather pants. At their crest was a belt holding several items including a radio, nightstick and gun holster, and just above that a snug but not skintight sky blue button-up shirt, short-sleeved and with the letters S.H.P.D. in tiny print on the right breast. Out of the shirt came two arms and a woman's head. Her medium-brown skin and dark eyes contrasted with her obviously bleached straw-coloured hair.

"Are you alright?" the policewoman asked, an obviously concerned expression on her face.


	7. Ogres and Sirens

Well, hello there! This is the last chapter I'll be able to upload for a couple of days - pfft, like I'd have anything done in the next few days anyway - because I'm heading to my grandmother's, and I can't afford wireless internet because I'm an unemployed seventeen-year-old. I don't really have much to say except thanks for the continued support. This really won't make so much as a blip on my updating schedules, but I want to see lots of fine new chapters when I come back! I'm talking to you, E.P.O. - you are a damn fine writer. 

Yes, well, anyway. Chapter Six!

CHAPTER SIX

Rachel's panting breath caught in her throat and she pushed herself back a few inches, knees sliding on the smooth cement.

"Wait," the police officer said quickly, taking a step forward and raising her hands, palms outward. "I'm not going to hurt you. I want to help."

Rachel pushed herself to her feet and fell backward, pressing herself against the door she had come from while eyeing the cop warily.

The brown-skinned, blond-haired woman stayed where she was, speaking softly. "You don't have to be afraid of me. I'm a police officer, my name is Susan Desales. I can protect you, I can...help you."

The novelist blinked, then wilted. "S-sorry," she mumbled. "I'm - I've got - "

Susan Desales shook her head, her voice still in a deliberate soothing tone. "Don't worry at all. I'm sure we're all just a little bit...jumpy, right now."

_She kept staring at her. _"I'm Rachel Jones," she said, pushing herself to an upright standing position. "Do...you know what's going on here?"

"No. I was on patrol, and I stopped off to use the washroom. When I came out I was all alone, and there was all this...snow, in August. Also fog." She frowned. "My motorcycle was gone, too. I liked my motorcycle."

The monster was two doors away and silent, but Rachel's blood pounded in her ears all the same. She clenched her right fist with her left palm, smearing sweat on her knuckles. "Uh - police officer? Officer Desales, right? You have...shotguns, right? Weapons?"

_She's trying to help you, get a grip, you want to stay alive don't you? _

"No shotguns, you can't really put that on a bike." Desales spotted Rachel's slight look of confusion. "You're not from Silent Hill, are you? This town is old - laid out when people still used horses. We have cruisers, of course, but for basic patrol we usually just use motorcycles. Handle the streets better. S'why police uniforms in this area have leathers.

"But I do," she continued, reaching for her holster, "have _this_." Her hand came up holding a huge, wicked-looking cannon of a handgun. Rachel tried to feel relief knowing that another person had such a monster of a weapon and that she'd be sticking close to that person. She failed.

"Er - um - you've...I guess you've seen the things that are running around, now, right?"

"Yes. I've had to use this a couple of times. On that note - it's dangerous out. We'd better stick together - I'll protect you, okay?"

The door to the outside world was cold, contributing somewhat to Rachel's shivering. It took several seconds for her to talk. "Super," she said quietly, finally.

The officer smiled warmly. "Don't worry. I won't let you out of my sight."

Rachel nodded mechanically as Desales turned around, grabbing something behind her. "I think we're in some sort of stockroom for the hotel. I came down here looking for something I could use, and I managed to find you charging in that door like a missile. I couldn't find much else though. Some Christmas lights, some toilet paper, nothing useful."

Rachel eyed a heavy shovel lying in the corner, but Desales kept talking. "Yeah, you could use that to whack things with. But you're with me, now, right? I'd suggest you carry light. If you were on your own, maybe, but I'm a trained officer so..." she just kept going on and on, and Rachel should be saying something but she was just looking like an idiot and -

"Rest of the hotel!" Shouted Rachel suddenly, and Desales stopped and stared. Rachel felt her face flushing and began to stammer. "I mean - what about the rest of the hotel, should we - should we explore, find something..."

"I know. Good idea, if we stay in one place we're only going to get tracked down. Maybe we can find out a way to reverse what's happened. And if we're going to explore the hotel..." The officer dug into one of the pockets of her leather pants and pulled out a heavily folded square of paper. She tossed it to Rachel, who unfolded it with a nervous glance at the talkative woman. After the last fold it was revealed to be a large map of the hotel, several floors. Rachel stowed it away, Desales's eyes staring at her all the time.

"We should get going," the officer said.

"We probably should," confirmed the novelist, softly.

The door opened and the two figures moved into the dark hall. The cop closed the door slowly, quietly. In the pitch darkness, the other switched on the flashlight, shining the narrow white beam about the hall. It was wide, high, sounds echoing about; far too large for the puny beam to illuminate fully. Desales tiptoed forward, silently moving along the wall, watching the gray shadows. Rachel followed behind, trying to mimic the police officer's actions but clunking on clumsy feet.

They came to a corner and Desales raised a hand, stopping Rachel. She cocked her head to the side, as if listening, and Rachel followed suit. She could hear something very faintly, a sort of hissing, almost. It was impossible to tell more than that, due to the quiet, or even where it came from; it could be steam or wind or...

Desales slowly reached downward and took her radio off her belt. She lifted it into the air. The hissing increased slightly and Rachel realized it was static. Desales stretched out the arm holding the radio outward, towards the corner. The hissing increased. Desales turned to look at Rachel (causing the writer to shrink back a bit as she did so - Desales had a hard expression on her face that Rachel thought was directed at _her_) and reached for the flashlight. The officer shut it off, but before she did Rachel saw her draw her monstrous pistol.

The hallway was incredibly dark without the light. Rachel looked around, but her eyes couldn't penetrate the inky blackness. There was no difference whether her eyes were open or closed, and all she could tell of the world about her was the still hissing static of Desales's radio, which started to fade.

It took a second to figure out that Desales was moving away from her, and Rachel swung her arms around to find her. She was gone, around the corner based on what she could tell by ear. Rachel put her hand against the wall, to keep from losing herself, and started to edge around the corner. She longed to call Desales's name, ascertain her position, but didn't.

She noticed that the static seemed to be increasing in volume, even though it was obvious it was still moving away. The police radio itself was getting louder at its source, but...wait. Rachel could hear something else over the sound of the crackling radio, sort of like shuffling footsteps, and suddenly Rachel had a flash of memory. She remembered being back at the town's border, being attacked, and all the time her car radio going off with crackling, spackling static.

Suddenly a cone of light was born, down the hallway, it source at the torch Desales held in one hand. The other held her pistol, out in a shooting position and pointing at the other end of the light. The other end illuminated something familiar to Rachel - though half-concealed in shifting shadows, the hunched-over form and writhing female torso was unmistakable.

Desales fired her hand cannon only a split second after the light went on. The first shot was followed by a quick succession of shots, causing the Hermaphrodite to stagger in its steps but still keep shambling forward. Desales began to walk backward, keeping out of its range, before the monster dropped to the ground on the sixth shot, writhing. Desales took two quick steps forward and kicked it a couple of times, silencing it. The entire process had taken barely more than a few seconds.

The flashlight instantly winked out again, plunging the entire world back into darkness, and Desales made no more sound. Rachel could hear nothing but blood pounding through her head like pistons to the beat of her headache, not even static. Not even breathing; she suddenly realized she had begun holding her breath at some point she couldn't remember.

The flashlight came on again, the strong white light shining over the walls and swinging towards her. It hit the corner and spots swam in Rachel's eyes as she narrowed her eyes to slits. The beam turned slightly away; not direct enough to blind her but enough to illuminate both women.

"Are you all right?" the police officer asked.

"Y-yes." The loud gunshots had in fact turned the dull throbs in Rachel's head into an excruciating migraine, but mentioning so could easily provoke more conversation.

"I'm sorry I had to do that without telling you. Radios give off static when they're near, you see? They can't hear it, but they can see the light, so you have to sneak up on them. Or at least, I have to, you don't have to worry about anything..." the cop continued on and on, Rachel just nodding her way through. Couldn't she stop? She was always _staring_, whenever she talked to you she just kept staring into your eyes. Maybe that was why she was a cop, maybe her usual job was to interrogate likely suspects. You were just under a microscope to her...

Desales was still blathering about something, and Rachel could feel her cheeks flushing and her palms moistening when the officer stretched, interlacing her fingers and pushing her hands up above her head. She somehow managed to keep a hold of the flashlight as she did so and it shined downward on her, shadows accentuating dark circles that existed lightly under her eyes. The blue shirt was of light material and short sleeved, and Rachel noticed something.

Desales stopped talking, following her eyes. "What?"

"Uh - nothing, it's just - just you got a mark..."

"Mark? Where?"

"Just - under your arm. I'm sorry, I wasn't - it's nothing - "

"Armpit?" mumbled the officer, fingering her short sleeve. She twisted her arm and frowned, peering at the vaguely star-shaped rash-like mark. "Huh. Look at that. I must have gotten scratched somewhere. I didn't even notice." She passed the flashlight over to the novelist.

"You...didn't notice?"

She waved her hand in a dismissive fashion. "It's just a scratch. It's not like I haven't been hurt before. Blows..." she trailed off, mumbling. "Burns..."

"Uh-huh. Uh-huh." Rachel kneaded the flashlight in her hands.

Desales shook herself, and cocked her head to the side in the direction of the hallway. She reloaded her handgun and turned to continue walking, eyes finally leaving Rachel, and the novelist visibly relaxed.

They passed through a door into another hallway, and static began to hiss on Desales' radio. Desales was reaching for Rachel's flashlight again when she stopped dead and cocked her head, listening. The static seemed to contain more than white noise, there was also some squawks and squeals and -

"_Shit_. Run," said the officer as she grabbed Rachel by the wrist, yanking her into a run. The cop pounded down the hallway, feet thudding on the marble floor. But Rachel was a writer who never left her apartment and wasn't nearly as fast, clumsily running after the officer who quickly left the range of her flashlight. The novelist was attempting to follow the static of her radio when something sharp and pointed jabbed into her side.

The point slashed at her, cutting easily through her white shirt and carving into her skin. Rachel spun, a fine spray of blood misting the air, and the beam of the flashlight fell upon a Whip-Arm; a clone of the one that had chased her down misty streets outside. Instantly, reflexively, Rachel jumped backwards and the blade whizzed by in front of her face. Her back slammed against the wall.

It bounded forward, coming into reach, long legs making huge strides. The whip flew forward again but Rachel ducked to the side, uneven metal blade glancing off the wall. Rachel, regaining her footing, steadied the light on the Whip-Arm - it could move faster than her, especially indoors. She charged.

The head of the stainless steel tire iron smashed into the side of the Whip-Arm's skull. Rachel brought the makeshift club up, gripped it tightly and brought it down on the creature again. She saw its tendril come up again, going for her neck - and dodged, barely, now that she knew what was coming. It hit her in the back of the head rather than her neck and she slid past it. It tightened on nothing.

The tire iron swept from side to side, its shining head smacking the Whip-Arm in its dry red flesh first left, than right. The other arm came up, with its malformed fetus hand, and smacked her in the face, but as before she barely even noticed it.

She wanted to run. Oh, god, how she wanted to run. But it had all but caught her the last time she had tried to outrun one of these things it could probably do better on these polished marble floors, whereas her sneakers were probably doing the same as on the snow and street outside. The tendril came around another time, trying its strangling trick again, but once again Rachel dodged - sort of. Her head slipped out of the way, but in doing so her arm just happened to be in the wrong place and the tendril wrapped around her wrist. It tightened - and Rachel had enough time to slip her hand out, but in the process the tire iron was thrown from her nerveless fingers and clattered on the floor.

The light shone on the Whip-Arm's brutal front, its huge shoulders of muscle, but Rachel was too high on adrenaline to think rationally. It was between her and the quickest way out, and therefore it had to go down. Rachel threw herself forward and slammed her shoulder into the chest of the monster, knocking it off its feet and sending both to the floor. Rachel scrambled over to her tire iron and sat up, casting an eye back at the Whip-Arm. It was writhing, scrambling, and even from a prone position the knife-tipped whip lashed out at her. The novelist only barely had the time to jerk back as it blade slashed through the air where her face had been. She pushed herself up, but even as she did so the Whip-Arm lithely regained its footing in a surprisingly agile manner.

Rachel was about to charge when the world exploded to her side, a flash of light in her peripheral vision matching the nearly blinding burst of her migraine. The flash illuminated Desales's cannon and the two hands wrapped around the grip. The Whip-Arm was thrown back, a huge hole in what stood for its chest. Two more explosions knocked the Whip-Arm onto its ass, writhing as it was before.

A steel hand locked on to Rachel's upper arm and tugged, all but throwing her off her feet. "We have to _go_," urged Desales, strands of her straw hair falling over her eyes.

"We'd better finish it off - " started Rachel, still too shocked to bite her tongue.

"I don't care about _that _thing! We've - _fuck!"_

Rachel was too shocked to react as Desales shot forward, grabbed her by the collar and yanked. This time the novelist was pulled off her feet, sneakers slipping on the polished floor, but even as that happened she felt something part the air behind her head, batting her shoulder-length hair aside.

Desales apparently wasn't aware that Rachel's footing was bad and tried to drag her along, causing Rachel to fall to her knees. The writer scrambled, kicking forward, but Desales seemed to be unsatisfied and whipped out her pistol.

Only one round was fired this time, because the bullet had only just left the gun when something black - Rachel couldn't tell what, her flashlight was on the floor and everything was in shadows - and huge slammed into Desales and threw her to the side. The black on black shadow that was Desales was lifted right off the floor, spending a second airborne before slamming into the ground with a sound like a bundle of sticks snapping in half. There was no scream, just an oof sound as the police officer was hit.

Rachel grabbed the flashlight and threw the cone of light onto the attacker. It was definitely the largest creature she had seen so far - even the Bloated wasn't this size. It was easily seven feet tall, even hunched over as it was, looking all the world like the hackneyed Ogre of fairy tales. The features suddenly stopped being cliché when it was right in front of you in real life; huge shoulders, barrel chest, tree trunk legs, even the giant club in one hand. The club itself was gigantic, much thicker than her torso and the business end studded with sharp, jagged obtrusions covered in unidentifiable substances. Only its head looked odd; instead of raggedy hair or huge fangs it was some sort of metal construction, like an iron box with a jagged cut in the front. Rachel would suspect it to be a helmet if it weren't joined to its cracked, gnarled skin. And it was obviously twenty times stronger and tougher and more dangerous than she was, and it lifted its club above its head to bring down on her.

Rachel rolled to the side, the club smashing down on the polished marble floor with a sound like a crashing train. She got to her feet and backed away quickly, quaking.

The Ogre twitched, then jerked her head in the direction of the fallen police officer. Desales was only barely moving, palms still attempting clumsily to find purchase on the floor. Sweat made the torch's light flash on her light brown skin and she was obviously in a lot of pain. Rachel hoped it was the sort of pain that came from having bruised breasts and having the wind knocked out of you, rather than the sort of pain that came from having your ribcage crushed and the pieces stab through your heart and lungs. The Ogre made a move towards her and Rachel panicked. No way could Desales move out of the way in her condition.

"Hey! HEY!" In desperation, Rachel hurled her tire iron at the Ogre - a lucky shot, the stainless steel rebounding off its metal skull with a sound like kicking an empty tin can. Surprisingly quick, the metal head snapped a hundred degrees to the right to look at her, the rest of the mammoth's body still twitching freakishly. It twisted toward her, and Rachel managed to figure out what it was going to do a split second before it did it. She barely managed to leap backwards as the gigantic weapon swung through the air one-handed. She tried to back up further, but she felt the coldness of marble through the back of her shirt and knew she had hit the wall.

Its arm flexed again and she ducked, the jagged attachments to the club hitting the wall above her head and throwing off actual sparks. Rachel shot a look to the police officer and saw her slowly getting up, trembling. Her attention refocused on the Ogre and saw that it was lifting the club in both hands, preparing an overhand swing. Rachel pushed herself to the side - bring her closer to her dropped ire iron, luckily - as hard as her legs could manage and dodged the blow. She actually felt he ground shake as the club smashed into the floor. She leaned over, nearly losing her balance, and managed to pluck her tire iron off the ground before breaking into an all out run, taking her within a few inches of the creature, as she prayed to every god there ever was that it wouldn't be able to swing at her in time before she reached Desales. She grabbed her by one arm and half led, half dragged her towards the nearest door as shown by her flashlight.

They reached it and passed through, slamming it behind them, but while the squeals and squawks disappeared from the police radio a background of hissing static remained. "Map!" Gasped Desales, scarcely above a whisper, and Rachel passed it to her almost unconsciously as she flashed the torch about in search of whatever hellspawn was in this room.

Desales tried to pull to the left, though she obviously wasn't strong enough, but Rachel had nowhere to go right now and took any guidance she could get. She followed the cop's lead and came to a door, which the officer reached out weakly and opened and inch. Rachel, panicked almost beyond the range of logical thought, kicked the door the rest of the way and passed through as quickly as humanly possible. Rachel tried to keep going straight, coming into something she only dimly recognized as some sort of plush hallway, but Desales reached out and managed to catch hold of the knob on a door right to their left. Rachel opened it the rest of the way, all but threw the officer inside, and slammed the heavy door behind her.

On the floor, Desales mumbled something. "Fridge..." Unquestionably willing to do whatever she was told at this point, Rachel looked in the direction of the officer's gaze and saw a small minifridge. She leapt over, violently ripped the door open and spotted nothing inside but one small bottle. Grabbing it, she leapt over the bed in her way and landed by Desales. The cop managed to grab it, open it, and turn the neck of it to her lips.

The adrenaline content in Rachel's bloodstream finally began to fall back below 50 and she had a look around the room proper. Standing up, she realized she was actually in one of the hotel's rooms, complete with bed, kitchen, minifridge and TV in the corner. A very short hall through the kitchen led to the bathroom. There was a square of a lumpy, but folded white bedsheet on the corner of the bed. The light was on - the first instance of such she had seen in the building, or the entire hotel come to think of it. Rachel made her way over to the TV and turned it on, flipped through a few channels - all static. Rachel slumped into a sitting position, back against the bed, suddenly exhausted.

There was a very light thump as the glass bottle hit the floor and Desales wheezed. Rachel stayed where she was, with her back to the cop. It was always easier for her to talk with her back to people - she didn't get so nervous if she couldn't see them. Of course, talking with your back to people is ridiculous in itself, and sometimes that itself set her off...

No. She wasn't staying where she was so she could talk. She was staying where she was because she was too tired to move.

"Are you all right?" asked Rachel in a defeated tone.

A moment of silence. "Thanks to you. You saved my life."

"Well..." Rachel didn't take compliments well. She had to stay calm... "you wouldn't have been in danger if not for me."

"I'm a cop. I'm trained to protect you."

_So tired. _"What was that drink?"

"Oh?" Moment of silence. "I guess you didn't get a chance to look at it. Health drink - first aid. Its got some stimulants to keep me going short term, it helps rehydrate me for blood loss..."

"...for stabilizing a casualty until they can get to the hospital. I know."

Few moments, only punctuated by both of their heavy breathing.

"Uh - " A familiar sensation was beginning to creep over Rachel now. This was not a relaxed place to be, and Desales just wasn't as soothing as she obviously attempted to be. "You looked pretty bad back there. Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm all right," said the officer, confident at least. "It just knocked the wind out of me, that's all. I think I just went unconscious for a few seconds. I'll have a hell of a bruise, a few cracked or broken ribs - but nothing _debilitating_, nothing crippling or anything."

Rachel put one elbow up on the bed, licking her lips. Her arm bumped against the square of folded bedsheet - and felt something hard. She frowned and turned her head to the square, slightly more lumpy now that she had bumped it.

It was ridiculous, but - she had found a key in a first aid kit after all, and a map in a phone booth...she grabbed one corner of the square with her thumb and forefinger and slowly lifted, catching a glimpse of what was underneath.

Her eyes widened and she stood bolt upright, exhaustion forgotten. "What..." she murmured, all but inaudibly, but Desales turned at the sound. Her eyes widened too, with a sharp question of "where did that came from?"

It was a pistol. A long, black and blue semiautomatic, to be precise. Rachel slowly lifted it, staring. "I dunno," she felt herself say in response to the officer's question. Slowly, she placed her hand on the grip. It was cool; Rachel shot a look at the bedsheet square and saw that it was damp where the grip had been touching. Rachel turned her head away back to the gun in -

_tap water washing blood from your face gun in both wet hands_

Rachel stepped back in shock. The gun dropped out of her hands - causing Desales to freeze up - and landed harmlessly on the bed.

"It's wet," muttered Rachel dumbly. "It's the same one..."

"Same what? Model? That looks like - "

"It's empty. It would be. If it's empty it's - " Rachel plucked the handgun and used her basic knowledge of firearms to yank out the magazine. It was empty. She slapped it back in automatically, hands shaking.

"Are you..."

Rachel grabbed the bedsheet itself and whipped it in the air, unfolding it completely. Low, there was an image like a stain. It was messy but still easily identifiable; circles and triangle, in a dull blood-like red, the same symbol as was on the wall that had sprung up on the highway. Rachel threw it away from her and it slapped against the wall.

"Are you..."

"No! I - " Rachel began babbling, staring at the gun, not even seeing the other woman during her verbal panic attack. "When I came into town there was this house, because I crashed my van, so I was looking for someone to get help. So I came upon this house, and there wasn't anyone there but a thing, a monster, woman on top and it was screaming and so I grabbed this gun - on the table, and it was _bleeding _- how can a gun be bleeding?"

"Do you hear that?" Desales was looking upward, as if she was listening for something.

"So, so before the monster I saw my face was covered in blood, so I went to the sink and started washing my face, and I got my hands wet and so I grabbed this gun and I got the gun wet! I got the grip all soaked because my hands were wet, the grip was slippery and then I dropped it because it was dead and all the bullets were gone - the clip was empty, right? So I dropped it and it should be all the way back at the house, I left it on the floor - "

"It's like sirens..." Desales blinked rapidly, rubbed her eyes. She ran a hand through her short bleached hair.

"And so I come to the hotel across the fucking town and it's here, in a hotel room under the laundry, and the laundry has that _sign _on it and that same sign was on the wall - the wall blocking the highway which couldn't be there and the sign was on both and something is - something is going on and - "

Desales suddenly screamed in agony, fists slamming against the side of her head as she dropped to her knees and Rachel jumped about a foot in the air. She screamed again in terrible pain - this from the woman who a minute earlier hadn't thought of a broken rib as debilitating.

"Oh my GOD! Please - " Desales screeched in pain again, a long, piercing wail that never seemed to end. "Stop it please - my head - "

Rachel was so terrified she didn't notice the red creeping down the wall, eyes popping out of their sockets. "I - I - " she couldn't think of anything productive to say, or do for that matter. Painkillers, but -

_Medicine cabinet_. Room had a health drink, it should have meds, right?

"Just wait! - I'll - " Rachel jumped over the bed, dashed into the kitchen area.

"Hurry please, it hurt - " she lanced into another agonized scream. "Help me daddy - mommy - " she whimpered.

Rachel slammed into the bathroom door, which popped inward easily. She didn't notice the strong discolouration of the wallpaper, or the way red had begun to drip out of the shower head. She grabbed the medicine cabinet and yanked it open, scrambling through various small bottles. She finally saw the word acetaminophen in tiny print on the label of one bottle and grabbed it.

_"Buuuurnns..." _she could hear Desales moan, and Rachel turned, but suddenly her concussion-granted migraine sprung into full force, like an atomic bomb going off in her head. Rachel actually staggered back from the blow, eyes clamped shut in pain, as the world shifted in earnest around her. She slipped and fell, landing in the tub, and was swallowed up by nothingness.


	8. Maybe

Hey everyone, back from the pits! Did ya miss me? Sorry I haven't updated in a long while, you have no idea the problems I had writing. For...months. Ahem. Well, I got at least this much out of me! Expect to see me updating a lot more in the future!

CHAPTER SEVEN

_pat_

_pat_

_pat_

White eyelids, blued by veins underneath, open slowly, hazel rings squeezing black down to a point, tiny in light.

Can only live in the darkness.

The first thing Rachel saw was a featureless wall, which she instantly recognized as the side of the bathtub. She was lying on her side - her arm, specifically, but it couldn't have been long because it hadn't fallen asleep yet. And her upper lip seemed warm...

_Pat_. A droplet of something fell from above, outside her range of vision, and landed on her upper lip. It dribbled slowly; liquid, but definitely thicker than water. It was like snot, actually. And directly under her nostrils...she hadn't noticed the smell before, in the way that one can curiously be oblivious to the most obvious senses until they consciously think about it, but now it hit her like a freight train. It was overpowering, almost sweet but not in any way pleasant. As a matter of fact -

Rachel's hand snapped to the upper lip and then in front of her eyes. Her index finger was smeared with a lumpy red-brown substance. "Fuck!" For lack of any better materials, she wiped her finger and then her upper lip on her sleeve. She stared at the smear on her once-white shirt with a look of disgust. "Symbol of femininity," she murmured darkly, and as she did so another droplet fell onto the sleeve's wrist.

Rachel slowly stood up. It wasn't hard to trace the source of the fluid; the showerhead was dripping, and the filter or whatever it was called - whatever separated the water into the separate streams that constituted a shower - had come loose and allowed the chunky bits to drain out the separation at its bottom. She carefully reached out, nudged the showerhead - and the "filter" fell clean off, bouncing off the bottom of the tub and throwing the crap that had collected in it all over her shoes. What was left of the showerhead continued to dribble the substance, obviously pumping out far more than would come from any real human being...

_But then, this whole place seems a little overdone, isn't it?_

The bathtub itself was by far the most pristine object in the room, bloody gunk and all. The wallpaper was soiled, if the word soiled could describe it; it had been turned a colour as if it had been soaked with urine repeatedly, dried, and then used to grind out lit cigarettes. It was marked and smeared with a substance that looked a lot like blood, although the pattern of the stains looked less like being splattered and more like a bleeding object had been pressed up against the wall so that it could soak in for a while. The ceiling was inexplicably dark, as if covered in some sort of short, black-brown grass or mold that hung downwards and gave an air of claustrophobia to the room. The ceramic tiles of the floor were cracked, looking like they had been somehow dried out and made unbelievably brittle. They also held the yellowish colour of the walls - though, come to think of it, the yellow tinge may be because of the lights in the room giving off a positively sickly tone...

Rachel stepped out of the bathtub, stepping carefully on the tile floor lest it be slippery, and made her way to the mirror. She had intended to check her reflection for blood in case she had hit her head again, but it was a futile effort; the glass was somehow _clouded _- giving only a foggy, blurred reflection, as if covered with a layer of Vaseline. This was compounded by the fact that it had a symbol drawn in red on the glass. The liquid had dribbled and run and was unidentifiable as anything other than what was probably a stick figure with a polygonal torso, and _maybe _another long line attached to the end of the arm - the figure holding something long and thin, _if_ the line wasn't caused by dribbling blood ruining the image.

She really didn't need to check herself anyway - her behavior thus far made that clear. She could walk, think and see. When she had awoken before, in the van...she had not been lucid. She could barely move, like trying to lift leaden limbs on gossamer threads. Even when she did get up she had to support herself on the side of her vehicle or fall over, from dizziness as much as anything else. Her brain cells couldn't connect, the world spun and nothing but the basest thoughts could be made.

Not now. She was fine - certainly not post-concussion, or even a fainting spell. It was as if she had simply taken a refreshing forty winks in the tub. She wasn't even groggy. Her head still hurt, but that was from the car crash, not anything new...

"So I wasn't knocked out," she mumbled. "This time, I just...woke up."

She turned her gaze to the bathroom's door.

It was dark outside the doorway, and Rachel pulled out her flashlight. The bright white light shone out of the end, bleaching the walls. They weren't urine yellow, but they were smeared with more red. _This town has a real preoccupation with blood, doesn't it? _she thought to herself, _dripping out of the shower, leading to the gun..._

"Yeah. At least the gun was bleeding real blood." Rachel continued to mumble, sarcastically. "Whereas everything else is dripping menstrual fluid..."

Desales was gone.

Rachel shone the light about the hotel room, alarm growing, but it was true. Desales had disappeared - she wasn't lying on the bed or dead on the floor or standing at the window - she was just plain _gone_. She took a step forward, and her foot connected with something. She stepped back quickly and shone her flashlight downward. It took a second for her to realize it was a box.

It took another second for her to realize it was a box of bullets.

She shone her light around, finding there was a second on the floor as well. She knelt, picking one up in her thin fingers and staring at it intently. "What..." she breathed. "Why would..."

They, according to the box's label, were .32 rounds and contained two magazines of eight each. Rachel shot a look to her pistol - even though she wasn't a fan, she had had to do some research on firearms once and remembered this specimen of being .32 caliber itself. Hesitantly, she opened the first box and found exactly what it promised - an evil-looking rectangular magazine, full to the brim of two-cubed bullets. She tried to load it into the black and blue semiautomatic and it slid home with a _clack_. She loaded a round into the chamber with a un-Hollywoodlike style harsh, hard-edged sound.

Perfect fit. Rachel slowly turned her gaze from the pistol to the door.

The hallway seemed to throb to some titanic, sluggish heartbeat, though there was no sight or sound of such phenomena. It was more like the air itself pulsated. It was dark, but there was enough ambient light to make the white shoe visible as it came down the "floor."

The torchlight spread its embrace across the ceiling, walls and beneath her feet. That behind her, that of the room she was in before, was ordinary drywall; blood-splattered in odd non-Euclidian patterns as it may be, but still drywall. Opposite herself was not even close to normal - an impossibly long strip of dented-looking metal, the original colour of which could only be described as "dull." The original colour however was hard to discern as it showed nothing more than a show of decay and disrepair, almost totally covered with rust as well as unidentifiable filth and general uncleanliness. The entire wall was a single long unit, one piece, and yet somehow looked slipshod anyway; it seemed to emanate an aura of dreariness, as if everything about and surrounding her was of some sloppy unfinished world. She shined the light upward and saw that the ceiling was nothing more than strips of dented, unfinished grating and random groupings of pipes. They seemed to make up the above floor. Rachel turned the flashlight downwards and saw the floor beneath her was more of the same. She dragged her foot an inch; it slid in some unidentifiable and unnoticeable slippery substance. She turned her gaze to the left and saw that the hallway continued; its stretched out far further than it had been before and faded into darkness before the end, her flashlight's beam swallowed up by a blackness that seemed material.

Turning her gaze to the right - to the direction she and Desales had come from, in that desperate blind flight back when the world still made a _sort _of sense - she had very little to see. It was only a couple of steps to the door they had come through - the door Rachel kicked open with ease - was boarded up. Two dozen planks of wood had been nailed to the door, crisscrossed with no sense of sanity or direction or intelligent thought. Nails that looked more like railway spikes were driven through the ends, securing the boards to the wall and blocking off the portal. Rachel could tell without even trying that she was _never _going to get through that door, short of finding a chainsaw.

And the boards looked _old_. They were gray and dry and musty. Weird white strings like cobwebs (but not cobwebs) existed in spots. There were discolorations in the wall where the nails had leached, turning the area around them mottled and yellow. They looked like they had been put up hundreds of years ago, and she couldn't have been out more than a few minutes.

Rachel turned back to her left - she still hadn't changed position from the first step she took out of the door - and shone her flashlight once again down the infinitely long corridor. "Deh-_Zallas_!" she hissed, making the paradoxical loud whisper. "Offis-zer Deh-_Zallas_!" Her words were deformed by whisper and strain.

"Please..." she mumbled, to herself now. She craned her head over her shoulder and peered back into the room longingly. It was small and creepy and the shower dripped menstrual fluid, but at least it was safe and quiet and familiar...

She remembered the sound of Desales's scream of pain, the sight of her flying against the wall.

Rachel whimpered, closed the door and began to creep down the hallway. Her foot raised and was lowered - it did not fall but was delicately placed upon the floor with the tenderness and caution of a baby being placed in a crib. It was by this soundless pace that Rachel advanced, flashlight beam held to shine into the endless nothingness. When the writer passed by a door she would test its knob, attempt to open it, but the knob only rattled loosely and, once, came off in her hand - the door impossible to open and to enter.

The hallway still continued, but Rachel could go no further. The floor itself had simply given out, the grating and pipes suddenly and inexplicably stopping at a straight and very deliberate-looking line, a perfectly square gap. The floor picked up again ahead, but it was a distance between the two equal to the width of the hall; it was far too great a distance for Rachel to jump. A look over the edge of the gap showed simply blackness which her flashlight could not dispel. She didn't know what would happen if she fell. She didn't want to find out.

But there was one point of interest. An elevator was set into the wall, just past where the floor ended. The doors were a shining, stainless steel, as were the walls to their left and right where the call buttons were located. The corners of the metal - so pristine and unsoiled in this environment, bizarre and out of place - touched the corners of the gap without the slightest error. It was obviously, so obviously deliberately arranged.

But by whom?

Rachel's gaze dropped from her feet, to the elevator doors. She couldn't jump the gap, not to the opposite floor. But the crack between the elevator doors were only halfway - maybe, maybe...

_Maybe._ Rachel licked her lips. She reached, leaning over with one hand bracing herself against the wall, and managed to use the tire iron to push one of the buttons. The elevator doors opened smoothly, blind to the world of decay about them. Rachel checked the distance between the doors and the edge of the floor again, and a third time.

_Maybe. Coin toss_. Her mind, her writer's mind - the intricate and beautiful thoughts that flashed back and forth a million times a second across her brain, that can take a sight, a smell, a feeling, a thought and put it into a hundred thousand million billion different combinations of words - her writer's mind went now, independently of herself and begging her to see what was going on in front of her. _Heads or tails. Fifty-fifty. Heads, you win. Tails, you die._

She started to back up, tentative slow steps as she kept her eyes locked on the elevator doors.

_Coin toss. No control. No control. Can't see. 50 chance to fail._

She bent her knees.

_50 chance to lose everything with no control. One out of two to die._

She ran forward, if you can call the two steps running before she hit the edge.

_Maybe._

She leapt, arms grasping for a hold before she even left the floor. She was flying, hurtling...

_Heads, you win._

Falling...

_Tails..._

And the thirty-six-year old whose exercise consisted of never going outside and whose diet included whatever cheap, zero-calorie item happened to be in the fridge when she got hungry once or twice a day fell too far and only caught the lip of the elevator floor, hanging out over nothingness, with her ribs. She scrabbled for a hold and swung out into space.

_...you die._

Rachel's arms and breasts were over the edge of the elevator floor, but everything below danged. Her legs kicked uselessly for a hold that didn't exist and her momentum swung her. Her knees should have smashed into the wall below the elevator but there was none, only inky blackness in an utter void under the Lion Heights first floor. Rachel's arms were crossed, trying to support her weight, and then snapped out to stretch themselves along the elevator floor and try to find something to grip - _anything _that would allow her to pull herself into safety instead of falling into a bottomless pit.

There wasn't anything on the featureless, carpeted elevator car floor. Her sleeved arms managed to find purchase but little more. Stable for God knows how few moments, Rachel tried to pull herself up by her elbows and shoulders, but failed. She just didn't have the upper body strength to for that - few people do. One hand slammed against the edge of the doorway and tired to push her inside, but she was at an awkward angle. It was like trying to pull one's self up by their fingertips. Her right leg kicked again, higher now; she swayed and nearly lost her balance before her toe caught on the elevator's lip, allowing her to push herself into the elevator by her leg. The feel of her thighs straightening, like pulling metal strings, was heavenly.

Rachel crawled the rest of the way into the elevator, gulping down mouthfuls of air as her eyes bulged. She turned herself over onto her back and simply laid on the floor, sucking musty oxygen in and out as she stared up at the ceiling, cold seat in her armpits.

But it was only a couple of seconds before she sat up; the adrenaline not yet worn off as she crawled on hands and knees to the rows of buttons. A bloody thumbprint was prominently displayed on the button for floor 4. Rachel breathed deeply in, then out before overlaying the print with her own thumb.

The elevator hummed and began its ascent; one level of hell for another.


	9. Blind

To whatever fans I have left: Well, I'm back with this at least. Remember when I said to expect a lot more updates in the future? Yeah...I'm pretty sure I'm an idiot. I don't know just how often I'm actually going to put things up here. I'm really sorry.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The two stainless steel doors slid open with nary a sound. Healthy, pure white light flowed out of the lift into the hallway, spilling across gnarled rusty walls and grated battered floor. It made a small area of comfort, a tiny haven in this world of sickness and decay.

There were several seconds of silence and stillness, and then a shadow blocked the spilling light. A brown-haired, hazel-eyed head peeked around the corner of the doorway, looking back and forth. Finally Rachel stepped out from inside the elevator and into the hallway of Lion Height's fourth floor. She held the flashlight in her left hand and the tire iron was hefted in her right. One finger pressed into the soft rubber button and light shot out of the torch's end, splaying itself against the wall. Rachel turned it back and forth.

The hallway was a copy of the first floor, complete with an inky material blackness, except for one thing. There still existed the gap in the grating, but it was moved - to her left, in the direction she had come from on the floor below. This left only one way to go; onward to the right, into unknown territory. She would have checked her map, but her route was already decided. She tried to check for drops of blood, some sign that Desales had been here, but it was a lost cause. Her surroundings were far too macabre not to devour such detail.

Each hotel room, again, was locked, until she came to a turn in the hall. It continued until it ended with a door - like the one she had found boarded up four floors ago - except that this one wasn't boarded up. This would cause Rachel to beeline for it, if the knob to room 404 had not turned so smoothly under her grip. This snapped Rachel out of her brooding state of alertness, eyes straining and ears perking, as she knew any room obvious to her would probably be the obvious solution to a wounded and desperate police officer. She slipped inside excitedly, sure she would find Desales inside.

Judgment error in room 404: Desales not found. Rachel couldn't see her in the first room, nor any side someone had been in. "Officer Desales?" she said quietly, knowing her voice would travel in the empty world, but got no answer. With wilting hope she passed through the bedroom looking for her, and then the bathroom. It best expressed her desperation when she whipped aside a shower curtain just to see if the police officer was hiding in the _bathtub_ - which she of course wasn't. Rachel moaned and fell against the wall.

Rachel turned her weary feet to the doorway and heard the crumpling of paper. She stepped back and looked down - lying on the bathroom's tiled floor, not quite flat now that she had taken her foot to it, was a sheet of ordinary paper with something scribbled on it, apparently torn out of a notebook. Picking it up, Rachel found she could read the scribbling, though the ink was smeared. It looked like it was written by a left-hander with a slow-drying pen who apparently didn't much care for the neatness of their work.

**MOTHER-FAIR SURE,MB WOMAN OR PREG? (NOT NEED VIRGIN)**

**SOLDIER/FIGHTER/COP/JUDGE/VIGILANTE/FATHER MB**

**PRIEST/JUDGE/LAWMAKER/MAYOR MB/FATHER MB**

**VICTIM-ACCUSED CRIME, MB INST. VICTIM CRIME, LOST IN COURT / MUST RES. THIS MORE **

Rachel blinked slowly, then brushed at the words with her finger. After the keys in the first aid kit and the traffic lights, she wasn't going to discount any message she found - even if comprehension didn't go along. She licked her lips. "Maybe...mother, sold-"

That was as far as she got before the air was split by a scream. Rachel jumped about a foot in the air and crumpled the paper to her chest. Stuffing it into her pocket, she tore out of the bathroom and then room 404 altogether. She looked around frantically, panic rising, and another scream came. In the hallway, she could tell from where it came - the door at the end of the hall, the copy of the one boarded up on floor one. Somewhere it registered in the back of the writer's mind that the scream was unfamiliar, definitely not in Desales's voice, but she tore the door open anyway and flew through.

The transition was jarring - the hallway had been dark, rusty and bloody. This corridor was a hospital room in comparison; well lit and a dull colour. It was not bright and cheery by any stretch of the imagination, but it was infinitely better than what had come before.

Rachel had little time to admire the scenery before a man - presumably the source of the screams - came tearing around the corner. It wasn't Desales, obviously, nor was it Ernest Bradley - who would have no reason to be in the hotel, but what of the world made sense anymore? - a dark haired man wearing a white muscle shirt and jeans. He slammed against the wall and fell to the floor, scrambling backwards on his hands. He was attempting to escape what came around the corner after him.

Rachel's breath caught in her throat when she saw it. She had seen the monsters earlier in town, of course - back before the hotel had transformed from simply abandoned and spooky to bloody and hellish. They were bizarre and deeply disturbing, alien in construction, not scary because they appeared dangerous so much as that they were so unnatural. Those monsters to the one she saw now, were as a delusional but subdued maniac to a_violent psychotic._

It was shaking and thrashing, as if it were having a seizure, but lurching with a deliberate intensity. Its arms seemed pinned to its torso (front or back - she couldn't tell), as if they had been melted into its flesh, but it seemed like it was trying to free them with furious yanks and tugs. It had pulled hard enough to snap its bones as its shoulders were torn apart and splinters of bone jutting upward through the wound. Its legs were bowed and bent, hideously deformed. The head was practically split in two by the huge, open mouth, with overgrown hideous teeth like knives pointing out in an unbelievable and seeming random array. If it was a human head, it would have to be bent back; the mouth was almost pointing straight upwards and she could only see one oversized, furious eye rolling around the room. A chain dangled from its groin - if it was supposed to be as if attached to its wrists, she again couldn't see if they had been secured in front or in back. The chain was long enough to drag on the ground, snapping as the creature's stumblings threw it in random directions. Most prominent of all was that every square inch of its flesh was torn and shredded and bloody, like it had been flayed alive. This wasn't like the Whip-Arm, where the "blood" was discolourations of its flesh. This blood was real - leaving a smeared red trail on the floor behind it, dribbling out of the ruined skin of its entire body.

And it lurched and stepped over the man, who fell backwards off his elbows to the ground and threw up an arm over his face and screamed. And it was twisting in some wholly impossible way when the gun in Rachel's hand kicked with the sound of an explosion, and the thing was pushed back as a .32 slug tore through it. Rachel held the gun like a vise in both hands, unable to move except to yank on the trigger, paralyzed so that she couldn't even scream, couldn't even close her eyes. The gun bucked and snapped backwards again and again, empty casings being spat out the side. One brushed by her hand and burned her skin - she didn't notice nor care. A third bullet slammed into the chained thing and splattered red blood - real blood, not a comic book black gunk - onto the wall behind it, and it began to_scream._ It was a high, screeching, inhuman sound, like metal being torn apart by a giant's hand, and its head whipped back and forth as it did so. It started trying to free its hands again, bone snapping as unstoppable force hit immovable object.

Rachel wasn't there. She was somewhere far away if she still existed at all. Her body still was there, depressing the trigger on the semiautomatic over and over, but she had left it. She was at the back of her skull with her knees pulled up to her chest and her hands over her ears, eyes shut. She wasn't there. She didn't have to see, hear, feel this. And because she wasn't even looking at her gun and was yanking the trigger and was just a body doing the same repetitive action over and over, some shots smacked into the wall instead of the creature and she ran out of eight bullets before the creature died. The gun clicked empty and the chained thing, the screaming wailing screeching bleeding thrashing stumbling thing took just one step and suddenly Rachel moved - falling a step back and ripping the magazine out of the gun, throwing it to the floor and pulling the second one and slamming it into the gun and loading a shell into the chamber - and fired. One-handed now, gun barking and jerking as lead smashed into the demon's body and it finally fell. It would be impossible to know just how many bullets it took to kill because Rachel had emptied her gun before it fell to the floor, a lifetime after it appeared in the form of a few seconds.

How long the scene was frozen after that, though, is impossible to tell - half an hour, or maybe half a second. But eventually the man broke the silence by pushing himself off a wall to his feet and bringing a heel down on the back of the creature. Bones snapped, but it didn't move. The guy turned to Rachel with a look of shock, face frozen in a state of unreality. "You saved my life," he said, haltingly.

Rachel's eyes latched on to the man as if she had only just again noticed he was there. Her mouth worked, but nothing came out. The gun dipped - slightly. "Uh..." she mumbled, voice low.

"No, I..." Now that he wasn't a blur, Rachel had time to see more of the man than just his clothes and hair colour. His most obvious quality was that he was absolutely overloaded with muscle. He was obviously a weightlifter, with arms like tree trunks and shoulders that swallowed up his neck. He looked like he could grab her at each end, raise her over his head, and break her in half. His white muscle shirt (soaked in places with sweat) barely contained his torso, its tightness and moisture combining to outline every muscle on his chest and abdomen. Besides his muscles, he looked like a rather plain twentysomething-year-old. The shirt and jeans were ordinary, though his shoes held a striking similarity to her own. He had a watch on his left wrist and his short black hair was messed with sweat. His face in particular seemed pink from running, but as the flush faded it left some red behind around his slightly bloodshot eyes. "I mean that," he continued, "I owe you. And I don't say that lightly."

"Uh..." Rachel took a step backwards. "Don't...don't worry about it. I..."

The man's eyes held hers for a moment, probing, peering at her like some laboratory specimen, then dropped.

"Of course." He muttered the statement darkly, complete in and of itself. His expression turned foul and he started past her. "Wouldn't do to have_my_ favour now. Doesn't matter that - "

"Hey!" Rachel finally managed to spit out. The man, who was at this point past her and heading for the door by which she entered, turned and looked back at her. His eyes were stabbing, accusing. Rachel's mouth went dry and her voice disappeared for a second. "Uh...who are you?"

The man stared at her for several seconds, and Rachel began to hopelessly feel the familiar sense of fear and panic well up inside her; like an icy hand dragging a finger along her intestines, leaving them numb and cold. But before she could make a paper-thin excuse to just take off, he spoke. "You don't know who I am?" He sounded surprised.

"Uh..." and yet he still stared. He liked to just stand and stare at her. Everyone in this damned town liked to stare at her. "N-no, no, I never..."

She was starting to shake, slightly. She thought back to Bradley, and how she had run away from him - an ally in this nightmare, one with a revolver and apparently enough ammunition to waste. That had been one of her worse panic attacks, but she was starting to think the one brewing right now was going to be pretty bad.

The man blinked. "Well, that's not a problem. Don't worry about it." His eyes couldn't help straying to the dead monster lying on the ground. His eyes narrowed slightly, darting from the bloody corpse to the gun in her hand back up to her face. "My name's Scott Carson. That was...well, if it weren't for you, I'd be dead." He stuck out his hand.

Rachel's eyes darted from her lock on Scott's face to his hand, which appeared somewhere around as broad as a tennis racket. "Uh-huh...uh...y-yeah." Her slim white digits disappeared within his grip. Their hands hung there motionless for several seconds before Scott started shaking her hand while hers remained limp. "Uh - I'm Rachel Jones - just..."

Scott dropped her hand. His mood looked sour. "So," he said, voice sharpened, "you know what's going on here?"

She shook her head. "N-no. I just drove into town and crashed my van - I have no idea what's going on."

"Just like you don't know who I am."

Rachel could just stare at him for a second. It was all she could do to keep from descending into a full-blown panic attack - by now the icy hand was reaching up from her intestines, beneath her ribs and through her lungs up into her head, leaving her entire body as cold as the snow outside. "I...I guess..."

"Hmm." Scott crossed his arms. "Well, neither do I. In fact - I just woke up. That is to say...I passed out. That was before...well, before all_this."_ He waved a hand at the surrounding walls. Though they were bare, Rachel assumed he was talking about the blood-encrusted rusty walls just a door away. "I was doing my exercise routine at home when everyone disappears and these - monsters, I guess, show up. I live near the hotel, and it was the first place I thought of going."

"Not the police station?" asked Rachel in a voice that sounded tiny in her ears.

Scott paused for a second. "No. It's...a ways away. I was...afraid of getting killed by one of those things." He nodded at the fallen creature. "Anyways, I was taking shelter in one of the rooms - 404. Then I got..." He frowned, put a hand to his head, "...I don't even know, but it was bad. Like a spike going through my head - a huge blast of pain. I passed out, went out and the hallway was all - well. You just came from it. I went this way for another couple of doors and then...well, you know what happened next, I think."

At least he had taken his eyes off her. Rachel blinked when he mentioned pain going through his head, her memory jogged. "Hey, uh, Carson..."

"Yes?"

"I'm looking for someone - a police officer. You didn't - did you see her? She might be hurt..."

"Police officer?"

"Uh - yeah. She's about this tall - " Rachel held out a hand at a level roughly equal to Desales's height, "and has short, bleached hair? Uh, brown skin - "

"Officer Desales," interrupted Scott. He looked grim.

"You've seen her?"

"I know her. This town's not so big. But I haven't seen her today, no."

"Oh." Rachel wilted for a moment. She started moving, heading in the direction that Scott had come from.

"You're not going to find her there," said Scott, arms still crossed. Rachel stopped and turned, but avoided his eyes. "I went down there - you'll get into a couple more rooms, then a locked door. There's no other way."

"Oh," said Rachel again. She pushed past Scott again, heading in the direction she had come from.

"What's your hurry?"

"I - " Rachel caught his eye again. His expression looked stormy. "I just - I'm looking for Desales, I was going..." she trailed off.

"You're heading out into some pretty dangerous territory just to find your cop friend."

"Well, I..." Rachel couldn't see what the problem was. Obviously there was something too subtle for her to pick up with her underdeveloped social skills and she was just standing there babbling like an idiot and - "I figured that - I dunno - I figured she might protect us, or...or something."

"You seem to be able to take care of yourself," he said, pointing to the pistol still in her hand, "and I can watch your back. Why would we need to find her? She's a cop, I'm sure she'd prefer we didn't risk our lives."

"I...I..."

"All you'd need is someone to watch your back, Rachel. I can do that." Scott suddenly took two big steps forward, bringing his face right up next to hers. He was at least five inches, probably more, taller than she. His eyes were narrowed and his mouth was a thin line. "Unless you don't want me watching you for some reason."

Rachel's mouth opened and closed uselessly. She couldn't talk.

"Maybe you should go look for your friend Desales," breathed the bodybuilder.

Rachel couldn't move for a second, but after a few seconds Scott raised one broad hand and pushed the writer on the shoulder, hard. She staggered back a few steps, staring, before slowly turning and slinking out the way she came.

Scott didn't move. He watched her go.

"Okay," Rachel mumbled to herself, back in the elevator, "where does that leave us?" She put a hand to her chin and her face contorted in effort. "Not on this floor...but the blood shows she did push the button at one time. So she must have been here and found it was a dead end...came back, wiped the blood off her thumb and went to..." Her finger hovered a few centimeters from the button.

Suddenly there was a loud sound from above. Rachel looked up - and then stepped backwards quickly, eyes wide as a rusty grate dropped out of the ceiling and slammed down over the elevator's closed doors. Her eyes darted over the brown metal and then to the elevator buttons, but a solid plate of metal covered them completely - obviously deliberate, as the entire rest of the grate was simply bars of metal forming a grid. Rachel stepped forward and tried to pull the grate upwards - it didn't budge. She looked upward and couldn't even see where the grate had come from.

There was a bump, and the elevator slowly started to lower. A grinding, mechanical sound rattled the walls, much different from the almost inaudible hum of earlier. Rachel suddenly felt very vulnerable, looking around at the walls around her. She gave a glance up at above the blocked door, spying the numbers through the bars of metal that would light up depending on what floor she was on. The numbers remained dark.

"So," mumbled Rachel, hands wrapping around the rusty grate. She just had to sit back and watch where the elevator took her. She didn't want to, of course...but what could she do? She was entirely at the mercy of outside forces. They held all the cards. She was nothing but a puppet. The gun, the wall, the elevator, she was just a...

"What the hell am I thinking?" Rachel said to herself. She blinked and shook her head. There were no outside forces. She wasn't anyone's puppet. The world had just gone fucked up, period. It wasn't as if...

"Get a grip, Rachel." This was a life or death situation. She was a shut-in whose physical training consisted of pacing her apartment or creeping out into the 2 AM world to buy food at a twenty-four hour supermarket and pay at the self-serve counter. It was a wonder she was alive at all. Her greatest and perhaps only advantage was her mind. She had to keep thinking logically. If she allowed herself to-

The metal shuddered around her and the elevator stopped descending. Rachel quickly took her hands off the gate so that they wouldn't be caught when it raised, but it never did. After several seconds of watching the grate Rachel began to get a paranoid feeling, as if someone was watching her, behind her. Rachel knew it was ridiculous - she was in an elevator, after all, and it wasn't as if there were any alternate entrances. She didn't have enough room behind her to lie down, let alone for someone to sneak in. In seconds, though, the feeling grew and became overpowering, and finally she turned around.

The back wall of the elevator was_gone,_as if it had never existed. It opened up into yet another brown and red splattered room, with low ceilings giving a feeling of being underground. The room itself was unlit, but the elevator's soothing soft light spilled outwards. Rachel cautiously advanced into the room, hazel eyes rolling back and forth as she scanned her surroundings.

If she had to guess, she'd say it was a kitchen, but after the recent change of scenery about the hotel it was hard to tell quite for sure. Spattered, rusted metal counters ran up and down the room, with various tools too degraded to identify from a distance strewn about. Dishes and the like littered a counter near a rusted sink on one side of the room, while a radio/tape player - presumably for the staff to listen to while they worked - was plugged into the wall opposite. There were twin doors to the room - both in the corners at the far end of the room, one in the left wall and one in the right wall. Pipes - some over a foot in diameter, others as thin as her wrist - jutted out of the walls at random, turning sharply. At the far end of the room, directly across from her, a huge chunk of unidentifiable meat sat on a counter against the wall.

Rachel's eyebrows shot up when she saw a bloody meat cleaver still stuck in the mess.

"Hello…" said Rachel, slowly stepping forward. Her eyes didn't leave the cleaver - a device designed to chop through meat, not like her tire iron, something she could actually use to defend herself - and had just reached the first of the rusted metal counters that ran up and down the middle of the room when she heard something from her right. It was soft, but identifiable - a hissing, a crackling. It was static, and it was coming from the radio.

Rachel's head snapped to the radio, eyes widening, and was frozen in shock for a split second before there was a sound of sliding doors behind her. She whirled in time to see the entrance to the elevator - the one with no doors she had seen, where it simply had appeared to be a removed wall - closing rapidly. She bolted for the closing portal - more important than the cleaver, she didn't even know if she could open them from this side - but they closed long before she got there, plunging the room into total darkness. Rachel slammed against the now unseen doors and bounced off without so much as budging them.

The crackling of the static was very obvious now, with a sort of high pitched whining warbling its way into the sound. Rachel blinked in the darkness and scrambled over to the radio, one hand slapping around at her waist and feeling for her flashlight. She found the wall and her hands hit its smooth exterior.

The radio was too big and ungainly to hold in one hand and so she stopped looking for her flashlight. She picked the tape player up and held it outwards, arms outstretched. She could feel the electrical cord bumping against her calves. She made a sharp turn, cord wrapping around her body, and pointed the radio in different directions, trying to discern where the source of its static was coming from. She turned again, shifting her legs, and pulled the plug out of the outlet. The cacophony of whines over crackling static stopped immediately.

"Oh,_shit..."_hissed Rachel as she frantically untangled the cord from her legs and dropped to her knees in the total darkness. She ran her hand down the cord and found the plug, holding it in an iron grip as she felt around on the wall for the outlet. "God,_where..." _

From behind her, hinged squealed as a door opened. Rachel stopped moving, stopped breathing, holding absolutely still in fear of being heard by whatever had entered.

In the darkness it was as if her hearing had been doubled. She could detect a sort of stretching sound, like stiff muscles or joints being worked, coming from the direction of whatever had entered in an unending repeating rhythm. Overtop of that was the rustling of fabric, not loud but definitely there, as whatever was causing the stretching sounds was wearing heavy cotton. Occasionally there were sharp, shallow, and wet-sounding intakes of breath as, presumably, whatever it was breathed. There was a short sliding sound as something shifted on the tile floor of the room, and then whatever it was began to move. Feet - or whatever it had in place of feet - slid along the ground at a deliberate, plodding pace, and after a second there was a high, painful gasp.

Nothing in the sounds denied the possibility of being human. In fact, all the sounds could very well be those of another badly hurt person, or even Desales - something about the gasp suggested a female, at least to Rachel - but she didn't think so. The radio was spewing static at a rate perfectly coinciding with its arrival. Rachel didn't want to consider the possibility that the radio detected monsters before - it just didn't make sense, it was _wrong,_and something about that disturbed her on a very deep level - but when it came down to the line she accepted it instantly. She couldn't hold on to her feelings in a life or death situation.

A cacophony of clatter suddenly leapt up from somewhere in the room as several metal bowls, utensils, and god knows what else fell the floor, presumably pushed by the unknown newcomer, causing Rachel to twitch sharply as her body tried to run or fight or do_something_to save her from the danger she was blithely putting herself in. With another high, painful gasp some more metal objects were swept off of the counters and ringing off the floors and each other. It was moving around the room - maybe even looking for her. It had already gone by, according to her memory, the sink and the cleaver in the time-

_The meat cleaver._She didn't have any other choice. There was something in the room looking for her, the elevator was gone to her, and even if she got out through one of the two doors in the room there was no guarantee she would find anywhere safe to hide. She couldn't stay crouched in the darkness forever. Her guts curled as black-brown fear ran through them, but she knew it was the only thing she could do.

Rachel slowly stood, doing her best not to make a sound, as the unknown newcomer shuffled and clattered its way across the room. The cleaver would be to her - right. Yes, to her right at about the middle of the wall or so - she had to do this right. She had to turn on her light to find it, and she had to get it in as close to no time as possible. As soon as her light went on, it was going to come right for her.

Rachel slowly lifted her flashlight as the newcomer made another pained gasp not very far from her left. The sound brought a twinge of fear in her insides but she forced it down. Slowly she turned the flashlight in her hand until she felt the rubber button under her thumb, then pressed down, praying that her memory was good and that she wouldn't miss.

In a sense, she didn't, but she did. The circle of bleaching white light shot out and illuminated the lump of bloody meat, but nothing else. The meat cleaver was gone. Rachel's heart stopped, but even as it did she spun around in time for light to shine brilliantly on the blade of the cleaver clutched in the monster's hand as it was swung at her.

Rachel threw herself backwards as the heavy blade cut the air less than six inches in front of her face, but even as she did and the light bobbed and darted and never covered the thing's body all at once she took in the sight. For a second it looked as if it was a very tall person, but that illusion was quickly dispelled. The cleaver was clutched in a thin, bony hand connected to a slim arm leading to a naked female upper body. The skin looked healthy at first glance but after further inspection showed a mottled dark look that wasn't quite normal. It also looked underweight, with ribs outlined against the flesh behind hanging breasts that swayed as it moved in its drunken gait. The collarbone strained the skin in sharp angles under a body head, looking like little more than skin stretched over a skull. Its thin lips were drawn back from clenched, grinning, shining teeth and the eyes, bulging from the bald head, were glaring in anticipation and eagerness. At the waist the woman was connected to a vaguely man-shaped creature, clad in soiled and ruined clothing that the woman seemed to grow out of. Its hands and feet were bare, each with elongated and angled digits. Stringy black hair concealed most of its face, but visible were short straight hairs surrounding an open mouth from which teeth jutted crookedly in their gums.

Rachel took several steps backward and slammed into one of the metal counters as the female gave a high, warlike scream and swung the cleaver again. Rachel desperately moved to the side as quick as she could while keeping her front towards the monster, one hand feeling her at the edge of the counter. Finally it dropped away and she jumped backwards, drawing the smooth cold pistol, pointing it at the creature, and pulling the trigger.

_click._ With a sudden rush of despair Rachel remembered the thing she had shot on the fourth floor while Scott lay at its feet. She remembered firing at it until it was dead on the ground while she had no idea when it had died. Most importantly, she remembered that she had picked up two magazines of bullets and used them both on the first thing she had seen, and now the gun was absolutely useless.

The thing dashed forward - male bottom clawing at the ground with both hands and feet, propelling it with formidable speed - and swung at her again, and Rachel could only barely duck to the side as it cut a bloody gash in the air. She remembered her tire iron, but didn't dare - she couldn't possibly get in arm's reach of that thing. She had never killed anything with the tire iron without getting hit at least a couple of times in return, and this was not just a clumsily wielded two-by-four or a millimeter-thin blade. If she got hit just once in the head or neck, she would die instantly, or almost instantly. Even if she didn't, or got hit in the torso or a limb - she may not die instantly, but even if she got the bleeding under control she'd lose the use of whatever limb got cleaved and basically be too hurt to go on and defend herself, which was a death sentence with the town as it was. There would be no one coming to save her. Attacking it with a tire iron would be suicide.

The cleaver, its blade giving an absolutely brilliant shine in the light of the torch, swung at the side of her head again. Rachel was still sliding with her waist to the counter, moving down it as fast as she could while still keeping an eye on the monster, but even then she could only barely avoid it. The absolute point of the rectangular blade, the furthest corner, pierced her skin just below her left temple. It dragged along her skull, drawing an icy red line all the way to her eyebrow before losing contact with her head. It wasn't even a hit - it wasn't even a graze. If the (pseudo)woman's arm had been a half inch longer it would have gone through her skull.

Suddenly Rachel felt cold cement through the back of her shirt and realized that the counter went all the way to the wall, and that she was trapped. The female half of the monster gave another scream of hunger and bloodlust as the male half swung itself forward and the female brought the cleaver down in an overhead downward swing. Rachel barely dodged to the side and threw herself onto the counter, knocking countless metal things to the floor and not even noticing the sound. She pushed herself off the other side and landed on her back among the bowls and utensils. A fork drove its tines through her shirt just above her waist and a centimeter into her flesh. She didn't feel it. She scrambled backwards as the monster - what little she could see with the flashlight's beam whipping about chaotically as the hand just propelled herself along - used the male's ropey gnarled arms to grab the edge of the counter and throw itself on top just to jump off on her side and land with all four of its limbs on the floor. The female half never took its gleaming eyes off of her and its face never lost its wide, wicked, teeth-baring smile.

Rachel tried to throw herself to her feet, slipped, and ended up in a twisted crouch. The monster threw itself forward, male mouth opening and closing as saliva leaked out of its lips, hands and feet gripping at the floor with their long, spindly digits. It moved so fast - Rachel barely got to her feet just as it reached her, and the female half clutched at the male half's hair with one hand as the other swung the cleaver sideways. Rachel threw up her arm in a pitiful means of self defense and the flashlight shone on the monster in all its full glory. Crazy shadows jumped about its face.

And then they dropped away as the cleaver connected with the flashlight. It yanked the flashlight effortlessly out of her hand and propelled it across the room, soaring majestically over two counters and smashing into the wall before it even reached the zenith of its flight. It hit the floor and winked out, plunging the room into absolute darkness. Rachel didn't even think, just throwing in whatever direction would get her away from the monster. She hit another counter, threw herself over, and landed on the other side - on her feet, this time. She held herself absolutely motionless, frozen as she strained her ears to the utmost.

Somewhere to her front and right, the female half of the monster screamed its scream. There was a shuffling of feet, first stationary and then moving across the room while keeping a roughly equal distance in front of her. There was a metal-on-metal scraping sound, presumably as the cleaver's blade dragged on one of the counters.

Rachel had never been more powerless in this town. She could feel ice-cold sweat on her face, running down her neck, trickling of from under her armpits, soaking her back...she could not kill it. She could not escape it. If it hit her once, she was dead. And now she was blind.

By now, the blood from her most recent head wound had run all the way down her cheek. Most of it continued to trickle down about her throat, but one drop advanced all the way across the bottom of her jaw to collect on her chin. Rachel swallowed, and it dropped to the floor. Finally Rachel's feet began to move, sliding soundlessly across the floor.

The sounds were starting to come in her direction, now. She could now identify a low, guttural breathing that was most likely the male half of the creature. Rachel slowly came in contact with the wall - or rather, the pipes coming out of the wall.

The creature was still coming in her direction, but she couldn't move fast enough to avoid it without making noise. The best she could hope for was that it would change its trajectory (for no reason) or somehow pass by her (which there was no room to do). Rachel could feel its presence - a black aura of death hovering in front of her, coming for her.

Her hand closed around the pipe, probably a just slightly thinner than her forearm, in a simple plea for something to hold on to.

The pipe shifted.

There was a female gasp, probably six feet or so in front of her. Rachel ran her hands up and down the pipe. It was long, maybe a metre or so, and wasn't connected at the bottom. Its connection to the wall was loose and could possibly be pulled out by a strong individual. But Rachel was far from a bodybuilder - someone like Scott or Desales might be able to do it, but she was just -

The monster, suddenly so very very close, probably close enough to hit her with just a couple of steps to gain momentum, gave out it high warlike scream, and Rachel felt liquid terror flush through her guts and up through her spine and to every extremity of her body and the knowledge, the indisputable**fact**that she was about to die, the shining metal cleaver would punch through her skull or go into her throat and leave her choking for air as her brain shut down screamed itself in her head over and over and blocked out everything and repeated in her ears and flashed in front of her eyes -

And she grabbed the pipe in both hands and tore it out of the wall with one movement that she just combined into the two-handed swing out into darkness that smashed into something like a sledgehammer. She felt something distinctly move and deform under the pipe, the feelings reverberating up the metal into her hands. The female half of the creature gave a screaming howl of pain as Rachel already brought the pipe back for another blow, smashing something else in the angel of death coming to kill her, that would kill her.

She heard something shift in the floor in front and took a step backward as there was a grunt, her mind instantly leaping to the conclusion that it had swung the cleaver where she had been. But the pipe was far longer than it could reach, and Rachel could hit it before it could hit her. She clutched the pipe hard and swung it over her head and downward, its end hitting something soft and crushing it as the female screamed in pain again. There was no pause or hesitation before swinging it again, low to the floor this time, and heard the male half grunt as she knocked or shattered something out from under the creature and felt rather than heard it hit the ground.

She brought the pipe overhead and downward again, smashing the thing at her feet with incredible force. With the gurgling choking from below she raised a foot and slammed it down on the creature again and again, the heel and steel toe crushing flesh and bones and sinew. And slowly she came to realize she was howling short cries through clenched teeth as she pounded the corpse with feet and metal, totally unaware of how long she had been slamming this dead thing in blindness.

The pipe she had raised suddenly just dropped. She could barely keep a hold on improvised weapon as her arm went limp and the end landed in the pulpy remains. With every drop of energy from her body gone Rachel's legs gave out and her knees hit the floor. She barely managed to slump into a sitting position against the wall. She drew her knees up against her chest and used one arm to wrap around her legs as she buried her face as much as she could.

She never let go of the pipe.


End file.
